Class 
Book. 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



SWITZERLAND 

THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



A JOURNEY OVER AND AROUND 
THE ALPS 



[see booklet in back cover for eight patent maps.] 



CONDUCTED BY 

M. S. EMEEY 

AUTHOR OF "RUSSIA THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE," 
"HOW TO ENJOY PICTURES," ETC. 



UNDERWOOD AND UNDERWOOD 

NEW YORK OTTAWA, KAS. 

LONDON TORONTO, CAN. 



TMT URRAffY OF ' 

CONGRESS, 
T vo Copjfca Recsived 

AUG. 21 1902 

OoPVfllGHT ENTRY 

CI. A A XXc. No. 

copy s. 



Copyright, 1S01 
By UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD 
New York and London 
(Entered at Stationers' Hall) 



Stereographs copyrighted in the United States 
and foreign countries 



Map System 
Patented in the United States, August 21, 1900 

Patented in Great Britain, March 22, 1900 
Patented in France, March 26, 1900 S. G. D. G. 
Switzerland, + Patent Nr. 21,211 
Patents applied for in other countries I 



All rights reserved 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Growth of the Swiss Nation 9 

Books to Read 24 

How to Get Ready for the Journey 27 

Switzerland through the Stereoscope 37 



ITINERARY 

1. The Falls of the Rhine and Laufen Castle. 

2. St. Gall, historic and beautiful, once a famous seat of learning. 

3. Luxurious interior of the Monastery Church, St. Gall. 

4. Zurich, the Metropolis of Switzerland. 

5. The Village Favorite. 

LUCERNE. (Page 52.) 

6. Lucerne and her beautiful Lake. 

7. The picturesque Bridge, Tower and Church of Old Lucerne. 

8. The Lion of Lucerne. 

9. Lucerne and the Lofty Pilatus. 

10. An Alpine Elevator to the Clouds, Mt. Pilatus. 

11. The Summit of Historic Pilatus. 

12. The Backbone of Europe, from the summit of Mt. Pilatus (7,000 

feet). 

13. The Lake of Lucerne from the Axenstein. 

14. Sisikon and the mighty Uri-Rothstock (9,620 feet). 

3 



4 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



15. The Bold Axenstrasse, hewn from the cliffs 360 feet above Lake 

Lucerne. 

16. Tunnels of the Axenstrasse, overhanging Lake Lucerne. 

BERNE. (Page 76.) 

17. The River Aare at Berne and distant Alps. 

18. Berne and her great Mountain Chain — the Bernese Oberland, 

40 miles away. 

19. Principal Street and Old Clock, Berne. 

20. At the Village Fountain. 

21. A Swiss Home and its Home Maker. 

THE BERNESE ALPS. (Page 87.) 

22. Ancient Thun and its Lake, from the Castle. 

23. Interlaken and Jungfrau (13,670 feet). 

24. Grindelwald Valley, the Wetterhorn and Schreckhorn, from 

Schynige Platte. 

25. Staubbach Waterfall (nearly 1,000 feet), in beautiful Lauter- 

brunnen Valley. 

26. Cloud-hidden heights and appalling depths — the Monch, Eiger 

and Lauterbrunnen Valley. 

27. Murren, the loftiest of Switzerland's Hamlets, and the Monch 

and Eiger. 

28. The Breithorn (12,400 feet) and Tschingelhorn (11,748 feet), 

Upper Lauterbrunnen Valley. 

29. Jungfrau (13,670 feet), from the summit of Scheidegg. 

30. Grindelwald Valley and the Wetterhorn from the summit of 

Scheidegg. 

31. Immense Glacier Basin beneath the Fiescherhorn, looking 

through Grindelwald Gorge. 

32. The Ascent of Jungfrau — Crossing the Glacier. 

33. A Country Road. 

34. Upper Grindelwald Glacier. 

35. All the World's the same, Switzerland included. 

36. The Wonderful Gorge of the River Aare. 

DISENTIS AND THE VIA MALA. (Page 125.) 

37. Looking down (east) the Rhine Valley from Disentis. 

38. Looking down (north) the profound Gorge Via Mala toward 

Thusis and the Rhine Valley. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



5 



THE ENGADINE. (Page 130.) 

39. Nature's Cathedrals, Piz Bernina and Roseg, Roseg Valley, En- 

gadine. 

40. Bella Vista, Piz Bernina and the Morteratsch Glacier, Engadine. 

41. Piz Palu — wrapped in eternal snows — Bernina Group, Engadine. 

42. Upper Engadine, most admired of Swiss Valleys, northeast 

from the Hahnensee. 

43. The Beauty and Splendor of the Engadine — looking southwest 

from Hahnensee to the Maloja. 

44. The Descent to Italy — Road winding down from the Maloja 

Pass, Engadine. 

THE ST. GOTTHARD RAILWAY. (Page 147.) 

45. Engineering feats on the St. Gotthard Railroad — Circular Tun- 

nels at Giornico, Italian side, Alps. 

46. St. Gotthard Railroad at Wasen (north side of Alps), Wind- 

galle in distance. 

THE BERNESE ALPS— SOUTHERN SIDE. (Page 151.) 

47. Grimsel Pass, Oberaarhorn and Finsteraarhorn — west from the 

Furka Pass. 

48. Magnificent view of Rhone Valley, with Weisshorn and Monte 

Rosa Group 50 miles away — southwest from Furka Pass. 

49. Looking south from the Eggishorn over Rhone Valley to Monte 

Leone and Fletschhorn. 

50. Huge Bed and Banks of an Ice River — Fiescher Glacier and 

Oberaarhorn, northeast from the Eggishorn. 

51. The Great Aletsch Glacier and Marjelen Lake — west from the 

Eggishorn. 

52. Edge of Aletsch Glacier — showing the treacherous crevasses, 

and Marjelen Lake (looking west). 

53. An Ocean of Ice — Great Aletsch Glacier (looking south), with 

Weisshorn in distance on right. 

ZERMATT. (Page 167.) 

54. Looking down (north) the Visp Valley from near Stalden — 

Bernese Alps in distance 

55. The "Alpine Spirit's Sanctuary " — the charming Zermatt and 

the Matterhorn. 

56. From verdure to eternal snow — the Matterhorn from pathway 

above Zermatt. 

57. The Matterhorn seen from the Schwarzsee. 



6 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



58. Wonderful Frozen Cataract, the Gorner Glacier, and Monte 

Rosa group. 

59. Zermatt, from the Schwarzsee. 

60. "Lion of the Alps," the Matterhorn (14,780 ft.)— guardian of 

eternal snow. 

61. Brei thorn, Monte Rosa Group, from the Gornergrat. 

62. Lyskamm, Monte Rosa Group, from the Gornergrat. 

63. Summit of Monte Rosa (15,217 ft.), from the Gornergrat, birth- 

place of the mighty Gorner Glacier. 

64. The Charming Resort, Zermatt, Valley of the Visp, beneath the 

mighty Weisshorn. 

65. Swiss Hamlet near eternal snows — Saas-fee, the Fee Glacier 

and the Alphubel. 

66. Life in Switzerland — a typical Alpine Home, Saas-fee. 

67. Industry and Simplicity — interior of a Switzer's mountain 

home, Saas-fee. 

68. Sion, with its Mediaeval Homes and Castles, Rhone Valley. 

THE GREAT ST. BERNARD. (Page 212.) 

69. Inn where Napoleon I. stayed, Bourg St. Pierre — Road to the 

Great St. Bernard Pass. 

70. World-famed Monastery and Dogs — Great St. Bernard Pass. 

71. Great St. Bernard Pass, Lake and Monastery — looking north- 

east, Grand Combin in distance. 

72. Western Side of Mt. Blanc range, from Col de Fenetre near 

Great St. Bernard Pass. 

LAKE GENEVA. (Page 218.) 

73. The Ancient Castle of Chillon, celebrated prison of Bonivard, 

Lake Geneva. 

74. Lake Geneva and the Dent du Midi, from Village of Glion. 

75. Beautiful Village of Montreux, on Lake Geneva. 

76. Sunset, Lake Geneva. 

77. " Lovely Geneva " — Bridges crossing the Rhone. 

MONT BLANC. (Page 228.) 

78. Belmat, first to ascend Mt. Blanc, pointing out his route to 

De Saussure, Chamonix. 

79. Frightful Alpine Precipices, looking from Aiguille Rouge (Bre- 

vent) to Mt. Blanc, Alps. 

80. Mont Blanc, Monarch of European Mountains, from the Bre- 

vent, Alps. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



7 



81. Climbing the heights above Valley of Chamonix — Aiguille Verte 

in the distance — Alps. 

82. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — cutting steps in the crystal ice of tho 

Bossons Glacier. 

83. Tunnel in the Glacier des Bossons, Mt. Blanc, Alps. 

84. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — halting with guides at Pierre Pointue — 

looking up Bossons Glacier. 

85. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — crossing Bossons Glacier crevasses — 

Grands Mulets Bocks, Dome and Aig. du Gouter in distance, 
Alp3. 

86. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — Ice Cliffs on the Bossons Glacier (looking 

southwest), Alps. 

87. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — looking from Grands Mulets hut to Dome 

du Gouter. End of first day's climb (sunset). 

88. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — looking back (north) to Grands Mulets 

hut (10,007 ft.), and Chamonix Valley, Alps. 

89. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — a mountain of snow, between the Petit 

(11,926 ft.) and Grand (13,000 ft.) Plateaux, Alps. 

90. Ascent of Mt. Blanc— Party resting on Grand Plateau (13,000 

ft.), Mt. Blanc in distance, Alps. 

91. Ascent of Mt. Blanc — Refuge Hut des Bosses or Vallot (14,311 

ft.), looking north to Bernese Alps 50 miles away. 

92. Summit of Mt. Blanc, highest point in Europe, looking north- 

east past Observatory to the Bernese Mountains, Alps. 

93. Descent of Mt. Blanc — Enormous Crevasse near the Summit. 

94. A Remnant of the Glacier Period — huge Mer de Glace and 

Grandes Jorasses, Alps. 

95. Ascent of Aig. du Tacul — looking to Tour Ronde, Mt. Blanc 

and Mt. Maudit from the Glacier des Periades, Alps. 
90. Ascent of Aig. du Tacul — looking south to Aig. du Geant; in 
distance to right Tour Ronde, Alps. 

97. Ascent of Aig. du Tacul — amid dizzy heights looking north to 

Aig. du Dru and Verte, Alps. 

98. The " Mauvais Pas " and Mer de Glace, Aig. du Geant in the 

distance, Alps. 

99. Mer de Glace from the " Chapeau," Aig. du Geant (13,150 ft.), 

Charmoz (11,295 ft.), and Montanvert (6,303 ft.), in dis- 
tance, Alps. 

100. Great Ice Fall at the end of the Mer de Glace, Alps. 



LIST OF MAPS 



" All bound in booklet at the end of this volume. 

1. General Map of Switzerland. 

2. Lake Lucerne and Surroundings. 

3. Lucerne. 

4. Berne. 

5. The Bernese Alps. 

6. The Upper Engadine. 

7. Loop Tunnels in the Biaschina Ravine. 

8. Loop Tunnels near Wasen. 

9. Zermatt and the Monte Rosa Range. 

10. The Great St. Bernard. 

11. The Chain of Mont Blanc. 



THE GEOWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



The story of Switzerland, can be divided, for convenience of 
thought, into four periods: — a, The times without any written 
records, 3000 to 1000 B.C.; 6, The times when the old Roman Em- 
pire included all this region in its dominion; c, The times when the 
country was the helpless prey of mediaeval princes, dukes and 
barons; d, The six centuries from the beginning of the Swiss Con- 
federation to the present day. 

a. Prehistoric Switzerland 

It is practically certain that parts of Switzerland were inhabited 
by men more than forty centuries ago. Archaeologists differ in 
their estimate of the age of the Cave Dwellers and the Lake Dwel- 
lers in Europe, but some of their traces are given a date as far back 
as 3000 B.C. Remains of the Cave Dwellers have been found near 
Geneva and Schaffhausen. In 1853-4 traces of Lake Dwellers were 
brought to light by a temporary lowering of the lake waters near 
Zurich, Neuchatel, Brienz and Morat. It is evident that there 
must have been for some time a considerable population living in 
huts supported by piles driven into the lake beds. They under- 
stood the use of fire, were familiar with several metals, and knew 
how to weave and embroider textile stuffs. Fragments of their 
household pottery, baskets, daggers, beads and other belongings 
have been dug from the lake beds after the lapse of centuries and 
can be seen to-day in the Museums of Zurich and Geneva. 

9 



10 



THE GROWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



The origin of these ancient people is, at best, a matter of hazy 
hypothesis. Herodotus in the fifth century B.C. described a peo- 
ple in Macedonia as living in huts supported on piles in the 
waters of lakes. It is thought that the prehistoric dwellers on the 
Swiss lakes may have come from that eastern stock and have 
brought with them into Central Europe still older traditions of 
Asiatic custom. Whatever they may have been, they had dis- 
appeared long before the first historic mention of the lands and 
lakes where they made their strange homes. 

Herodotus says that in the sixth century B.C. there was an 
emigration from Phocaea, on the iEgean shore of Asia Minor, after 
the Persian Cyrus conquered that country. The refugees sailed 
west to the region of the present Marseilles, and then went up a 
great river, apparently the Rhone. It is possible that these emi- 
grants succeeded the Lake Dwellers as inhabitants of the Alpine 
valleys; but, thus far, proofs of their occupation of the land are 
lacking. There is a gap of several centuries, where we know 
nothing certainly about the land or its people. 

b. The Roman Occupation 

It was in the first century B.C. that the first recorded reference 
was made to lands and people in the region now known as Switzer- 
land. The natives were recognized as of Celtic stock. The Rhaeti 
lived in the eastern region — now called the Grisons — and in the 
Tyrol. The Helvetii occupied the territory between Geneva and 
Lake Constance. These Helvetii were energetic barbarians and 
Home heard of their doings. In the second century B.C. they 
allied themselves with neighboring Teutonic tribes and made a 
successful invasion into Gaul, actually defeating a Roman army at 
A gen on the Garonne. In the succeeding century they planned 
another invasion; and this second enterprise of theirs became 
lamous for all time; for the Roman general who opposed their 
movement, — anticipating by several centuries the modern passion 
for war-histories written by the acting warriors in person, — put 



THE BOMAN OCCUPATION 



11 



the whole proceeding into a narrative which has had vastly wider 
reading than any of the works of his later imitators. The opening 
book of Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars has had — if not 
exactly "popularity" in the sense of enthusiastic enjoyment — at 
least a world-wide reading, whose possibility was never dreamed of 
by either Romans or Helvetians. The amount of it was this: — 

The Helvetians east longing eyes on the more fertile lands of 
Gaul (France) lying at the west. They organized a wholesale 
emigration from certain of their own districts, burned to the 
ground twelve of their own towns and four hundred hamlets, to 
forestall the danger of any homesick backsliding in their own 
ranks, and, in the year 58 B.C., moved westward towards Geneva. 
Rome objected to this move. In the first place, it meant invasion 
and all sorts of complications in a region which she desired to keep 
strictly in hand. In the second place, if the Helvetii were to leave 
their proper home vacant, some Germanic tribe or other would 
certainly push down into it from the north. Rome preferred to 
have the Helvetians stay where they belonged and Julius Caesar 
was commissioned to tell them so. The Helvetians were plucky 
but it was Caesar with whom they had to reckon. They were 
checked here, defeated there, finally driven back, — the poor hun- 
dred thousand surviving out of nearly four hundred thousand, — to 
rake up the ashes of their deserted towns, rebuild them, and begin 
life all over again as the vassals of Rome. Caesar added security 
to his conquest by subduing the tribes occupying the region of the 
Valais, south of Helvetia proper; and a few years later the neigh- 
boring territories on the east were brought under Roman rule. 

It would appear that the Romans, though conquerors, were not 
particularly oppressive in their control of the new territory. On 
the contrary, their constructive energy and their large command 
of capital brought a certain degree of improvement into the lives 
of the rough mountaineers. Wherever they went to stay, the 
Romans built good roads, and in this respect the country became a 
gainer. They established towns at Nyon on Lake Geneva, at 
Augst, at Baden near Zurich, and at Aventicum (now Avenches). 



12 



THE GROWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



Again, though Koine had no intention of carrying spiritual 
enlightenment to her northern subjects, it was thanks to the 
Roman occupation, that Helvetia became Christianized within a 
comparatively short time after the apostolic teaching began to 
spread. The commander of a certain Roman legion became a con- 
vert to the new faith in the days of Maximianus and his zeal had 
time to communicate itself to others in the Helvetian country 
where he was sent, before he was put to death for his objectionable 
views. This was early in the fourth century. In the year 381 
there was a Christian bishop at Martigny in the Valais. Mission- 
aries came from Rome to the regions about Thun in the west and 
Chur in the east, and the faith spread. It was working steadily 
like a leaven, when the Roman Empire itself sickened and died. 

The Huns and Goths who poured down upon Italy in the fourth 
century swept through parts of the present Switzerland like a pes- 
tilence. The country was no longer crushed under Rome, but its 
condition was far from being bettered by Rome's downfall. It had 
a wretched period of vicissitudes and struggles to pass through 
before coming in sight of its real destiny. 

To-day the Roman rule in Switzerland is a thing of the past. 
The mediaeval miseries which followed the decay of Rome are also 
things of the past. Yet, strangely enough, a few relics of Roman 
dominion and elegance remain to testify to what has been. At 
Avenches there is still to be seen a bit of a fine Roman building, 
close kin to the familiar architecture of the Forum and the 
Capitol. 

" By a lone wall a lonelier column rears 

A gray and grief- worn aspect of old days. 
*Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years, 

And looks as with the wild, bewildered gaze 

Of one to stone converted in amaze, 
Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands, 

Making a marvel that it not decays, 
When the coeval pride of human hands, 
Levelled Aventicum, hath strewn her subject lands." 



THE DARK AGES 



13 



c. The Dark Ages 

In the year 407 a.d. the Alemanni, a German tribe from the 
north, crossed the Rhine and the Jura and took possession of 
northern Helvetia. In 443 the Gallic Burgundians pushed in from 
the west and took the territories now included in southern Swit- 
zerland and Savoy. The region east of Savoy now forming the 
canton of Ticino remained, for a long time still, practically like a 
part of Italy. On the other hand, Rhaetia (the Graubunden of to- 
day) remained for some time practically undisturbed by new in- 
vading influences. We can trace the effect of these varied con- 
ditions in the present variations of language spoken in different 
parts of Switzerland — German, French, Italian and Romanseh, the 
latter showing close relationship to the vulgar Latin of the old 
Roman colonies. 

In the northern districts the Alemanni replaced both barbaric 
and Latinized customs with their own German ways of doing 
things. Under their management the lands were parcelled out into 
farmsteads, with a tract of undivided pasture and forest where all 
might graze their cattle and cut their wood. The new masters 
were originally pagans, but they were before long converted to 
Christianity by the efforts of missionary monks who came down 
from Ireland. The Alemannic conquest of northern Switzerland 
corresponds, in a way, to the Saxon and Anglian conquest of 
Britain. 

In 469 the Franks overcame the Alemanni, and sixty years later 
they absorbed the Burgundians, thus bringing Helvetia, as a whole, 
into the Frankish kingdom. The direct responsibility for its 
government was divided up among a number of rich nobles. The 
establishment of great monasteries at St. Gallen, Einsiedeln and 
Beromunster gradually strengthened at the same time the temporal 
power of the Church. Charlemagne interested himself in Zurich 
and other towns in this part of his empire, making liberal dona- 
tions to the churches and encouraging the establishment of schools. 



14 



THE GROWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



But, the empire of Charlemagne falling to pieces, poor Helvetia was 
once more divided between quarreling contestants. The eastern 
half of her lands became subject to the duchy of Swabia, the 
western to Burgundy. Early in the eleventh century the German 
emperor gave the dukes of Zaehringen authority over the western 
territory, and that meant perpetual quarrels between the represen- 
tatives of this duchy and the Burgundian nobles, who had become 
used to having things their own way. The times were troublous 
enough. They look picturesque now, seen through the poetic 
haze of romance and story; but life in the days of warring 
counts and barons was hard on the peasants. They saw the 
seamy side of what looks now like a piece of quaint and splendid 
tapestry. 

The nobles grew more and more arrogant and exacting. Some- 
times the towns and the country districts were wholly at their 
mercy and were shamefully taxed and burdened by requirements 
and restrictions, chiefly to the advantage of the castle-folk. Early 
in the thirteenth century the cantons of Uri and Schwyz were 
granted Reichsfreiheit, or direct dependence on the Austrian 
emperor, thus technically relieving them from the exactions of the 
counts of Hapsburg. But Rudolph of Hapsburg himself succeeded 
to the throne of Austria, and he confirmed only in part the 
privileges which these cantons had begun to enjoy. An Austrian 
governor or bailiff was appointed to direct authority over Uri and 
Schwyz, together with the neighboring district of Unterwalden, and 
it looked as if the old feudal bonds would be strengthened instead 
of being relaxed. Property rights in valuable pasturage were 
taken from those to whom they belonged and given unjustly to 
favorites of the court. Such unreasonable tyrannies roused the 
indignation of the people; and brutal cruelties inflicted on some 
of their number brought this indignation to a crisis. 

Near the close of the thirteenth century (in 1291, according to 
popular tradition), representatives of the three cantons made a 
pact among themselves to strike for complete freedom from Aus- 
trian rule. The historic facts have been heavily embroidered at 



THE GROWTH OF MODERN SWITZERLAND 



15 



this point with romantic legends ; but the facts remain underneath. 
The three cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, realizing the 
impracticability of expecting just treatment from Austria through 
her petty representatives, did make a solemn agreement to stand 
for independence and to stand by each other in whatever struggles 
they should become involved. This was the beginning of the Swiss 
"Republic. 

d. The Growth of Modem Switzerland 

According to popular, but probably untrue legend, a moving 
spirit at this juncture in Swiss history was the picturesque figure 
of William Tell. His story has become rooted so deep in our 
sympathies that it seems a pity to disturb it ungraciously; but 
the truth is that the familiar story about the apple and the cross- 
bow can be traced back only to a manuscript narrative by an 
anonymous writer about the close of the fifteenth century, that is, 
nearly two hundred years later than the supposed occurrences. 
The story, as told in the " White Book of Sarnen," runs as follows, 
regarding Gessler, the hated Austrian bailiff, and how his frivolous 
arrogance added the last touch of unbearableness to the Austrian 
yoke. It can be read in the Rathhaus of Sarnen, in the old German 
script of some unknown chronicler between 1467 and 1474. 

" Now it happened one day that the bailiff, Gessler, went to 
Ure and took it into his head and put up a pole under the 
lime-tree in Ure, and set up a hat upon the pole, and had a 
servant near it, and made a command whoever passed there he 
should bow before the hat, as though the lord were there; and 
he who did it not, him would he punish and cause to repent 
heavily, and the servant was to watch and tell of such an one. 
Now there was an honest man called Thall. He also had 
sworn with Stoupacher and his fellows. Now he went rather 
often to and fro before it. The servant who watched by the 
hat accused him to the lord. The lord went and had Thall 
sent, and asked him why he was not obedient to his bidding, 
and do as he was bidden. Thall spake : 6 It happened without 
malice for I did not know that it would vex your Grace so 



16 



THE GROWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



highly.' . . . Now Thall was a good archer ; he also had pretty 
children. These the lord sent for and forced Thall with his 
servants that Thall must shoot an apple from the head of one 
of his children; for the lord set the apple upon the child's head. 
Now Thall saw well that he was mastered, and took an arrow 
and put it into his quiver; the other arrow he took in his 
hand, and stretched his cross-bow and prayed God that he 
might save his child, and shot the apple from the child's head. 
The lord liked this well and asked him what he meant by it. 
He answered him and would gladly have turned it off. The 
lord would not leave off; he wanted to know what he meant by 
it. Thall feared the lord and was afraid he would kill him. The 
lord understood his fear and spake: ' Tell me the truth; I will 
make thy life safe and not kill thee ! ' 

Then spake Thall : ' Since you have promised me, I will tell 
you the truth, and it is true ; had the shot failed me, so that I 
had shot my child, I had shot the arrow into you or one of 
your men.' 

Then spake the lord : ' Since now this is so, it is true I have 
promised thee not to kill thee;' and he had him bound, and 
said he would put him into a place where he would nevermore 
see sun or moon." 

The result of it was that Gessler with his men took Tell as their 
prisoner down to the shore of Lake Lucerne to carry him off to the 
destined dungeon. But a sudden storm came on; Lake Lucerne is 
famous for sudden storms. The steersman of the boat was inca- 
pable, and in order to save the lives of the party, they had to undo 
Tell's bonds so that he, an expert boatman as well as archer, 
might bring the boat to a landing. What he did was to steer near 
enough in-shore to leap to a rock at Fliielen and leave his quon- 
dam captors to settle their own accounts with wind and wave. A 
little later, when the Austrian party had succeeded, after all, in 
effecting a landing, Tell found a chance to use his second arrow. 
Gessler did not live to reach his own home. 

According to the legend, this adventure of Tell of Uri, added to 
the wrongs and miseries of others in the cantons near Lucerne, 
excited such a pitch of popular indignation that the compact for 
independence was energetically kept. The agreement was ap- 



THE GROWTH OF MODERN SWITZERLAND 



17 



parently only verW at the first, but at some date, not much 
later, it was formally written down in Latin and German. 

" Be it known to every one that the men of the Dale of Uri, 
the Community of Schwyz, as also the men of the mountains 
of Unterwald, in consideration of the evil times, have full 
confidently bound themselves, and sworn to help each other 
with all their power and might, property and people, against 
all who shall do violence to them or any of them. That is our 
ancient Bond. 

Whoever hath a Seigneur, let him obey according to the 
conditions of his service. 

We are agreed to receive into these Dales no Judge who is 
not a countryman and in-dweller, or who hath bought his 
place. 

Every controversy amongst the sworn confederates shall be 
determined by some of the sagest of their number, and, if any 
one shall challenge their judgment, then shall he be con- 
strained to obey it by the rest. 

Whoever intentionally ox deceitfully kills another shall be 
executed, and whoever shelters him shall be banished. 

Whoever burns the property of another shall no longer be 
regarded as a countryman, and whoever shelters him shall 
make good the damage done. 

Whoever injures another or robs him, and hath property in 
our country, shall make satisfaction out of the same. 

No one shall distrain a debtor without a judge, nor any one 
who is not his debtor or the surety for such debtor. 

Everyone in these dales shall submit to the judge, or we, the 
sworn confederates, will take satisfaction for all the injury 
occasioned by his contumacy. And if in any internal division 
the one party will not accept justice, all the rest shall help 
the other party. 

These decrees shall, God willing, endure eternally for our 
general advantage." 

The dramatic versions of the Tell legend, written by Schiller in 
1804 and by Sheridan Knowles in 1825, appealed strongly to pop- 
ular sympathy, and, for many years, established the story on a 
firm basis of popular credit, in spite of the protests of exact 
scholars. In later years the desire for plain truth has gotten the 
better of emotional enthusiasm, and the story of the persecuted 



18 



THE GEOWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



archer has been reluctantly allowed to pass over into the hazy 
realm of ballads and folk-tales. 

In 1315, after a series of struggles against Austrian authority, 
the men of the three confederated cantons, — only about thirteen 
hundred in all, — met at Morgarten an Austrian army of nearly 
twenty thousand, led by Duke Leopold, and put their oppressors 
completely to rout. The anniversary of the battle is still cele- 
brated as a local holiday. 

In 1332 Lucerne joined the original confederation, making a 
fourth canton; and a few years later Zurich, Glarus, Zug and 
Berne followed her example. 

In 1386 another encounter with Austrian troops took place at 
Sempach. The Austrian soldiery, it is said, presented a solid front 
of bristling pikes, against which the force of the Confederates could 
make no impression. A hero rose to the occasion. Arnold of 
Winkelried cried to his countrymen : " Take care of my wife and 
child. I will open a way to liberty." He rushed single-handed 
on the enemy and gathered in his arms the points of all the pikes 
he could reach, letting himself be pierced through and through in 
order to break up the serried ranks with the surprise of his onset. 
The Confederates followed, and poured fiercely into the opening 
thus made. The fighting was fast and furious; but the Confed- 
erates gained the day. Arnold did open a way for liberty, for the 
defeat of Sempach was the most powerful blow yet struck at Aus- 
trian dominion. The battle of Nafels two years later, in 1388, 
put an end to Austrian rule over the allied cantons. In this battle 
three thousand Austrians were killed, but only fifty-five men of the 
Confederate forces. So fervent is the patriotic gratitude of the 
Swiss toward those who bought their freedom, that, once a year, 
on the second Thursday of every April, the names of these fifty-five 
men are publicly read, to keep their honorable memory green in 
the hearts of the new generations. 

During the fifteenth century there was much dissension among 
the free cantons and before these were ended Charles the Bold, 
Puke of Burgundy, took a hand in the fighting. The Swiss were too 



THE GROWTH OF MODERN SWITZERLAND 



19 



strong for their foreign foes, and peace was at length brought 
about in their own borders. 

In 1481 Fribourg and Solothurn were admitted to the union. 
In 1501 Basle and Schaffhausen came in and Appenzell joined the 
others in 1513. 

The sixteenth century was the time of Zwingli in Zurich and 
Calvin in Geneva, both energetic leaders in the great religious 
movement which brought about the division of the Church into 
Catholic and Protestant. The Swiss leaders of the Reformation 
were among the ablest men in all Europe. As a counter-movement, 
the Archbishop of Milan, since known as St. Carlo Borromeo, or- 
ganized, in 1586, a " Golden League " of the distinctly Catholic 
cantons, for the preservation of the older faith. 

At the close of the Thirty Years' War the Treaty of Westphalia 
(1648) formally recognized the independence of the united cantons. 
They did not, however, at that time take the name of Schweiz or 
Switzerland, but were known as " The Upper League of High Ger- 
many." At that time the associated cantons included none out- 
side the Rhine Valley. All had a German-speaking population. 

The latter half of the seventeenth century and a part of the 
eighteenth were made distressing by religious and civil wars 
among the cantons within and without the union; but the Peace 
of Aarau in 1712 formally established religious equality. 

At the close of the century the French Revolution caused the ex- 
isting Confederacy to be dissolved. For the next few years Aus- 
trian, Russian and French armies were advancing, retreating and 
fighting each other over Swiss soil. Then, in 1803, Napoleon took 
the formal reorganization of the country in hand. He summoned 
delegates to Paris, and reshaped their confederation, admitting six 
more cantons, — St. Gall, Grisons, Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino and 
Vaud. At this time the name of Schwyz or Schweiz, which had 
come to be applied colloquially to the whole group as well as to the 
one small canton near Lucerne, was recognized as the designation 
of the entire confederation. In 1814 the Treaty of Paris gave the 
independence and neutrality of Switzerland the guarantee of the 



20 



THE GROWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



European Powers. In 1815 the cantons of Valais, Neuchatel and 
Geneva joined the confederation, making twenty- two in the whole 
union. 

In 1844-47 there was a movement for secession among the more 
conservative Catholic cantons; but it did not ultimate in any 
breaking up of the federation. On the contrary, a revision of the 
constitution in 1848 made Switzerland one country, its cantons 
retaining a certain degree of independence while yet belonging 
organically to the whole. A Swiss author, Eugene Eambert, says 
of this national union: — 

"A majority of Teutonic stock, respecting a minority of 
Romance origin; a Protestant majority respecting a Catholic 
minority; a certain number of relatively populous and strong 
states thrown with full sails into the current of modern life, 
respecting the slowness of those old pastoral democracies for 
whom centuries seem like years; — that is the example which 
Switzerland must present to the world; that is the mission 
imposed on her by nature. It is worth while to live in a 
country destined to so noble a trial." 



The area of Switzerland is 15,976 square miles; out of this area 
28.4 per cent, is covered by snow and ice and is unproductive in the 
ordinary, direct sense of the word. Of the remaining 71.6 per cent, 
a little more than one- third consists of hay fields and pastures; a 
little less than one-third is given up to forests; the remainder is 
divided between vineyards, gardens and town and village occupa- 
tion. The pasturage for cattle is a chief dependence of the people. 
Outside their hay crops, rye, oats and potatoes are the chief agri- 
cultural products. Vineyards are valuable within very limited 
districts. 

The heights of the twelve loftiest mountain summits — including 
Mont Blanc which, though King of the Alps, stands in French 
territory — are as follows: 



THE GROWTH OF MODERN SWITZERLAND 



21 



(When referring to figures of height on foreign maps, 
remember that a metre is equivalent to 3.28 feet, English 
or American measure). 



Mont Blanc 15,781 feet. 

Monte Kosa 15,217 " 

Lyskamm 14,889 " 

Weisshorn 14,804 " 

Matterhorn 14,780 " 

Dent Blanche 14,318 " 

Finsteraarhorn 14,026 " 

Aletschhorn 13,721 " 

Jungfrau 13,670 sr 

Aiguille Verte 13,540 " 

Schreckhorn 13,386 £ 

Piz Bernina 13,295 " 



In 1898 there were 2,316 miles of railway in working order and 
165 miles of tramway and cable roads. Recent legislation is to put 
the Swiss railways under the control of the State in 1903. The 
telegraph lines are already owned and operated by the State. 

The population at the time of the last published census (1888) 
was 2,917,740, women being slightly in the majority. 

The supreme legislative power is vested in a Federal Assembly 
composed of two houses: — the Nationalrath, or National Council, 
and the Standerath, or Council of States. Members of the National 
Council are elected triennially, and paid by the State, a " Federal 
Circle " or district of 20,000 (or fraction over 10,000) sending up 
one member. To the Council of States each canton sends two 
members,* elected for shorter terms by the canton and paid from 
cantonal funds. The two houses must concur for the passage of a 
law. They have power to make treaties, to declare peace or war, 
and to make enactments regarding coinage, weights and meas- 

* Three of the cantons are subdivided into two political sections, 
each half-canton sending one of the two representatives. The 
cantons thus divided are Basle, — into Stadt and Land; Unterwald, 
— into Obwald and Nidwald; Appenzell, — into Ausser Rhoden and 
Inner Rhoden. 



22 



THE GKOWTH OF THE SWISS NATION 



ures, customs-duties and postal and telegraph affairs. They have 
general authority in matters regarding the care of rivers and 
forests, and have power to establish State Universities. 

The executive power is vested in the Bundesrath, or Federal 
Council of seven members elected for three years by the Federal 
Assembly. The President and Chairman of the Bundesrath, elected 
by the Federal Assembly, is ipso facto head of the State; but he 
has no extraordinary personal authority. 

The Supreme Court consists of nine judges and nine deputy 
judges, elected by the Federal Assembly. They have power to 
decide disputes between the canton and the individual, between 
canton and canton, between the individual and the State, or be- 
tween the canton and the State. 

Every Swiss may vote at the age of twenty-one. All forms of 
worship are allowed. The press is free and the right of petition is 
free. No revision of the Federal constitution can be made without 
direct appeal to the people. The " Referendum " was established 
in 1874. Whenever a petition demanding the revision or annul- 
ment of any measure passed by the Legislature is presented by 
30,000 citizens, or the alteration is demanded by eight cantons, the 
law in question must be submitted to the direct vote of the people. 
50,000 citizens can demand consideration by the Legislature of a 
revision of the present constitution, a draft clause to be made up 
and submitted to popular vote. 

No canton can maintain an armed force of more than three hun- 
dred men. No canton can make an independent alliance with 
another canton nor with any outside power. On the other hand, 
the several cantons co-operate in the maintenance of the postal, 
telegraph, and telephone systems and the system of weights and 
measures. They have many laws in common regarding such uni- 
versal interests as the maintenance of highways, the protection of 
forests and river-banks, and the preservation of game. Each can- 
ton makes its own provisions for elementary public schools. There 
are five university centres, — Basle, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne and 
Zurich. 



THE GROWTH OF MODERN SWITZERLAND 23 

Cantonal affairs are put into the hands of a Council elected by 
popular vote, — except in Appenzell, Glarus, Unterwald, and Uri, 
where the people themselves vote directly on each question. The 
public meetings of this latter sort (Landsgemeinden) are a pic- 
turesque survival of the primitive forms of Swiss democracy. 

W. D. McCraekan, the American author of the best political his- 
tory of Switzerland, says: 

" The primitive Swiss cantons are at once the oldest democ- 
racies in existence and the most radical. Statesmen never 
contrived, philosophers never speculated upon, or poets sang 
of commonwealths so practical, rational, and withal so ideal 
as they, in which the voice of every man was more distinctly 
heard and the execution of the public will more certain of ful- 
filment. In them the maximum of flexibility has been recon- 
ciled to the strongest conservatism, and that without asser- 
tions of equal rights or theoretical definitions of liberty, but 
naturally and without premeditation." 

The flag of Switzerland is a familiar one, — a Greek cross of white 
on a red ground. The international association for the protection 
and relief of the wounded on battle-fields was organized at a con- 
vention held on Swiss territory; and its well-known emblem, the 
Red Cross on a white field, simply reverses the relation of the 
Swiss colors. 



BOOKS TO BEAD 



" Of making many books there is no end." 

The literature devoted to Switzerland is increasingly 
voluminous. From the catalogues of the large libraries 
it is sometimes difficult to make a choice when one is just 
beginning to take special interest in the subject. No 
book list could ever seem equally satisfactory to any two 
readers; but the following suggestions may serve some 
readers as convenient guide-posts. They indicate a few 
of the many excellent works which can be read in Eng- 
lish, and leave out of the reckoning equally excellent 
volumes accessible only in French, German and other 
continental languages. 

For the history of the country and the development of 
the federal constitution, read 

W. M. McCrackan: Rise of the Swiss Republic. 
Karl Dandliker: A Short History of Switzerland. 
F. Grenfell Baker: The Model Republic. 
J. M. Colton: Annals of Switzerland. 

For travellers' tales, accounts of perilous mountain 
climbing and hair-breadth escapes, turn to 

Leslie Stephen: The Playground of Europe. 
Edward Whymper: The Ascent of the Matterhorn. 

Scrambles Among the Alps. 

Guide Books for the Matterhorn and 

Mont Blanc (full of fascinating stories of 

Alpine adventure). 

24 



BOOKS TO BEAD 



25 



H. Schutz Wilson: Alpine Ascents and Adventures. 
Charles Edward Mathews: The Annals of Mont Blanc. 
William Martin Conway: The Alps from End to End. 
Herbert Marsh: Two Seasons in Switzerland. 
"Peaks, Passes and Glaciers " (a collection by several famous 
Alpinists). 

The published volumes of Reports of various Alpine Clubs, 
including papers by distinguished members. 

If yon are interested in the combination of daring ad- 
venture with systematic, scientific research, look up 

John Tyndall : Glaciers of the Alps. 

Hours of Exercise in the Alps. 

If you want topographical facts, go straight to the 
guide-books of Baedeker, Murray and Whymper. 

Then there are some good things combining studies of 
the country with studies of the Swiss people and of social 
economics in Switzerland. Such are the books by 

A. T. Story: Swiss Life in Town and Country. 
William Hepworth Dixon: The Switzers. 
Adams and Cunningham: The Swiss Confederacy. 
F. Barham Zincke: A Month in Switzerland. 

Swiss Allmends. 
A Walk in the Grisons. 
p J. A. Symonds: Our Home in the Swiss Highlands. 

The lighter books of travel, keeping more to sights 
seen by tourists in general, include many so delightfully 
written as to be most entertaining companions. Among 
these are surely to be counted 

W. D. Howells: A Little Swiss Sojourn. 
W. M. McCrackan: Teutonic Switzerland. 

Romance Switzerland. 
Rev. H. Jones: The Regular Swiss Round. 

If you would like to look at the country imaginatively, 
through the eyes of its own simple country people, be sure 
to read a few good bits of fiction like 



26 



BOOKS TO BEAD 



Berthold Auerbach : Edelweiss. 

Johanna Spyri: Heidi. (It is described as "a story for chil- 
dren and those who love children"; 
the author might have added " for 
those who love the great world out- 
of-doors." 

Of course you must know the two great dramas, that, 
in their day, set our romantic grandsires and great-grand- 
sires a-thrill with sympathy for the Swiss struggle to- 
wards freedom from the Austrian yoke: 

Schiller: Wilhelm Tell. 
Sheridan Knowles: William Tell. 

Switzerland has furnished the scene of a most delicious 
piece of humorous fiction: Daudet's " Tartarin on the 
Alps," — a masterpiece of its kind. Clinton Dent's 
"Above the Snow Line/' though made up of the distin- 
guished Alpinist's reminiscences of more or less perilous 
expeditions, is full of fun, and furnishes an agreeable 
complement to the hair-raising narratives of some of his 
Club brethren. 

Poets without number have been moved to put into 
verse their impressions of Swiss scenes and legends. 
With such an embarrassment of riches it would be very 
difficult to recommend special readings in the poetry of 
the Alps, were it not that one poem surpasses all the rest, 
as Mont Blanc overtops all neighboring peaks. The 
" Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni," given 
us a hundred years ago by Coleridge, remains still the 
one perfect thing that has been written to express what 
most of us can but vaguely feel. 



GETTING- READY FOR THE JOURNEY 



If this were to be an ordinary Swiss journey, we should 
need to consider questions of tickets, trains, boats, hotels, 
clothing. As it is, we need not concern ourselves about 
time-tables nor excursion rates, about the choice of inns 
nor of shoes for Alpine climbing. All we have to do is 
to consider the special vehicles we are to use, — the stere- 
oscope and stereograph, — so that we may know how to 
use them in the most profitable and enjoyable way. 

It is not enough to take a stereograph in the hand and 
look at it as we would look at an ordinary picture of the 
same subject. If we do only this, we get only what an 
ordinary picture mignt give us. A stereograph is not just 
an ordinary photograph duplicated and placed beside its 
" double " on a card. It differs fundamentally from a 
duplicated photograph. Take Stereograph 49 (" Looking 
South from the Eggishorn over Ehone Valley ) and look 
at it without the stereoscope. Even so, it is beautiful and 
impressive. You judge there is probably some distance 
between the nearer rocks and snow ridges and those hazy 
mountains in the background. Now use your stereo- 
scope. . . . Have you not made some surprising discov- 
eries about the space relations of what lies before you? 
You do not have to estimate the probabilities of open 
spaces between things. You actually see the open spaces 
as clearly as the things; and you see space in places where 
the mere " picture " gave no hint of its existence. 

The difference between an ordinary photograph and a 
stereograph is this: An ordinary photograph of a given 

27 



28 



GETTING EEADY FOR THE JOURNEY 



scene is taken "by the use of one lens, giving us just what 
we might see with one eye from that particular stand- 
point. A stereograph is taken by the use of two lenses 
side by side (between two and three inches apart), giving 
us just what we might see with our full equipment of two 
eyes; and this is quite another matter. The right eye, by 
virtue of its location in the head, has a chance to see 
farther towards or around the right side of any solid ob- 
ject before us; the left eye is able to see to a greater 
extent towards or around the left side of the same object. 
Using both eyes at once, as we do in everyday experience, 
we practically see part-way around solid objects. 

Try it. Take this very book and hold it (closed) at 
arm's length, directly before you, the back towards you. 
Shut the right eye and look with the left only; you see 
not only the back but also part of the cover on the left 
side. Close the left eye and look with the right, keeping 
the book in the same position; you now see the back and 
a part of the cover on the right side. Look with both 
eyes; you get an impression of both covers at once as well 
as the title-back. You practically see around it; conse- 
quently it looks solid, as if it had, in truth, thickness 
as well as length and breadth. 

The right-hand print on any stereograph card presents 
what one would see with his right eye if standing just 
where the camera stood. The left-hand print on the 
same card shows what one would see at the same moment 
with his left eye. The difference between the two views 
of any distant object is so slight that very often it can- 
not be detected in the stereograph without carefully exact 
measurements and comparisons, but the difference always 
exists. Examine, for instance, Stereograph 69 ("Inn 
where Napoleon Stopped, Bourg St. Pierre. Road to the 
Great St. Bernard Pass "). The building in the fore- 
ground shows an evident difference between the two 



GETTING EEADY FOR THE JOURNEY 



29 



prints. Look carefully at the right-hand end of the little 
one-story building, and you will find it appreciably wider 
in the right-hand print, narrower in the left-hand print. 
The right lens or eye of the camera saw farther around 
to the right than the left lens could see. 

Stereograph 67 shows a variation even more striking. 
See what different reports the two eyes give as to the 
relation of the clock-face and the distaff. 

In ordinary, healthy vision, we are not conscious of re- 
ceiving two different reports from our two eyes. The 
mechanism of our visual organs is such that when looking 
at solid objects in nature, our two impressions get fused 
into one. When the two prints of a stereograph are in 
question, we need the optician's help to fuse those two 
impressions into one. The needed service is rendered by 
means of the carefully set lenses of the stereoscope. 
Viewed through the stereoscope lenses, at a distance suit- 
able to one's own' eyes (the distance varies with different 
people), the two prints are seen as a unit and solid objects 
" stand out " in space exactly as if the reality were pres- 
ent. For all practical purposes of seeing, the reality is 
present. For a curiously striking bit of testimony to the 
faithfulness of a good Swiss stereograph, just read, in 
the notes on Stereograph 85, what an English mountain- 
climber wrote home in regard to the ascent of Mont Blanc 
from Pierre Pointue to the Grands Mulets. 

And we see objects, people, buildings, all details, in 
their full size. Suppose while standing within six inches 
of your window you look out and see a man on the street 
corner, a dozen rods away. He is a man of average height. 
But if you were to scratch his image on the window pane, 
just as it lies there, showing how much space that image 
really occupies on the glass, your drawing would be only 
a fraction of an inch high. A very small image near the 
eye thus corresponds perfectly to a much larger object 



30 



GETTING READY FOR THE JOURNEY 



that is farther away. It is in accordance with this 
general principle that stereographic figures of men and 
women, houses, trees, all sorts of things, when seen 
through the stereoscope, are experimentally identical with 
full-size objects considerably farther away; that is, if 
the focal length of the camera, the distance from the 
lenses to the plate, and the focal length of the stere- 
oscope, the distance from the lenses to the stereograph, 
correspond. As a matter of fact, the eyes receive 
from the details of the stereograph, a few inches dis- 
tant, images of exactly the same size as the images that 
would be received from the actual things at the actually 
greater distance, if the observer stood just where the 
camera stood. When one studies a stereograph, he is 
therefore practically looking through the card and seeing 
the real things, full-size, heyond it. That is what the ex- 
perience really amounts to! 

One other thing about stereographs should be noted 
beforehand. When seen, as they should be^ through a 
stereoscope, they fill the whole field of vision. The hood 
of the stereoscope shuts out all irrelevant sights, leaving 
us in the presence of whatever the stereoscope has to 
give us. This separation from immediately surrounding 
things makes it easily possible to put those out of mind 
and to think only of what is before the eyes. 

It is distinctly worth while to give each stereograph 
this undivided attention, realizing that, for the time, as 
far as our inner experience goes, we are actually in the 
presence of whatever the stereograph has to reveal. 

But, unless we have a clear notion of the locality in 
question, our feeling of actual presence might be partly 
fanciful " make-believe." It should not be mere make- 
believe. It should be, and can be, a deliberate, purposeful 
exercise of the imagination (or the memory), with a basis 
of accurate knowledge about the lay-of-the-land. The 



GETTING READY FOR THE JOURNEY 



31 



maps prepared to accompany these Swiss stereographs 
will be found invaluable helps to clear, correct thinking 
about the location of each successive point of view and its 
relation to those which precede and follow. In this Swiss 
tour we are to take one hundred different standpoints, in 
various parts of Switzerland. Each one of these one hun- 
dred standpoints is plainly located on one (sometimes on 
several) of the maps, being in each case at the (numbered) 
apex of a V printed in red. The spread of the arms of 
the V indicates the range of the view obtained from the 
standpoint at the apex. Eeference to the proper map 
shows us exactly where we are to locate ourselves men- 
tally; it shows us in what direction we are to look; it 
shows what must be behind us, what must lie off at our 
right and at our left. Map 1 gives the whole route, in- 
dicating the advance by a continuous red line. Maps 2- 
11 give more detailed particulars. 

Do not fail to use the maps. You will find that the in- 
creased definiteness in your understanding of the scenes 
and the increased vividness of your sense of location will 
repay you times over for the slight trouble of turning to 
look for the information they have to give. 

The study of a stereograph in the manner suggested 
here does actually lead one through the mental experi- 
ence of being in the place itself. This experience is not 
fanciful, but real. It has to do, not with mere dull, 
material facts, but with facts of consciousness, — facts of 
mental attitude and action. 

Think a minute what is the nature of the experience 
which you value most when you visit some place pre- 
viously unfamiliar. The mere bodily experience of being 
in personal contact with a certain street pavement or a 
certain gravel path is not what you value most. The 
smells in the air, the noises of traffic — these you seldom 
care to recall in any detail. What is it that you do regard 



32 



GETTING EEADY FOR THE JOURNEY 



as most precious? What do you strive, over and over, to 
reproduce in memory? Surely the experiences that came 
through your intelligent use of the sense of sight; the 
feelings you had when you saw with your eyes how 

" The splendor falls on castle walls 
And snowy summits, old in story.'' 

And it is precisely this experience, obtainable through 
the sense of sight, which stereographs give when they are 
utilized intelligently. As we have just reminded our- 
selves, we receive absolutely the same visual impressions 
of the forms of things that we might receive from the 
material things direct. If to these visual impressions we 
add a definite, clean-cut knowledge as to what things or 
places lie at the right and left of our field of vision, if we 
have some clear notion what is behind us and what lies 
ahead of us beyond the immediate limits of a particular 
view (and this is what the figured maps are for), if we 
thoroughly understand what we are seeing, we do have, 
to all intents and purposes, the mental experience of being 
on the spot. We have the feeling of being on the 
spot. And it is this mental and spiritual experi- 
ence which counts. The cows feeding on a Swiss " alp " 
or mountain pasture experience all the physical facts of 
seeing Swiss scenery, but they never attain to the truer 
mental and spiritual reality of seeing Switzerland with 
the mind. The material facts are only the raw stuff out 
of which genuine realities may be wrought in the work- 
shop of the receptive, active mind. 

Of course, stereographs have their limitations. They 
do not at present give us color. But they do give us, in 
the most exquisite fashion, what the painter calls " val- 
ues" — degrees of lightness and darkness corresponding 
to the luminosity of the actual colors; and, after a little 



GETTING READY FOR THE JOURNEY 



33 



practice in looking for those beautiful gradations of value, 
the pleasure to be gotten out of that kind of effects is so 
great that one can accept the absence of actual hues. 
Look at Stereographs 13, 14, 15, 16. It is true, we should 
be richer if we could see actual blues and greens, russets 
and browns and olives and gold; but we are passing rich 
even as it is, if we just use our eyes. 

Stereographs do not give us the actual, physical sensa- 
tions of varying atmosphere, temperature, and so on. 
That is true, and loss is implied in the fact. But it may 
not be frivolous to recall to mind that there are some ad- 
vantages as well as disadvantages in omitting the physical 
experience of winds and waves and arctic cold. If one 
" averages " the reminiscences of returned travellers, it 
would appear that experiences of discomfort are those 
which ordinarily make the deepest impression. We who 
travel by stereograph have the privilege of counting up 
some gains as well as losses on this account. 

And stereographs do not give us motion. They do 
give, to a wonderful degree, the effect of motion in some 
of its most beautiful phases. Take Stereograph 43 
(" Beauty and Splendor of the Engadine; looking South- 
west from the Hahnensee to the Maloja"), and see if 
the airy sweep of those light clouds across the sunshiny 
sky is not absolutely real, to a person with a bit of 
imagination. Here, again, a certain loss inherent in the 
fixity of a stereographic print is partially balanced by a 
gain inherent in the very same fact. How many times 
have we ourselves said, in the face of some experience 
direct with nature, " Oh, if this could only last, just as it 
is!" But it doesn't. The stereographs give us an op- 
portunity to repeat any given experience again and again. 
We can go back and look up at the Matterhorn as many 
times as we like and find the selfsame inspiration in its 
eloquent gesture. 



34 



GETTING KEADY FOR THE JOURNEY 



These, then, are our travelling directions: 

Consult the maps frequently in order to get a clear idea 
of your location. 

As a rule, it will be well to read the notes about each 
stereograph before looking at it, returning to the notes 
as often as may be desired when studying details of any 
particular scene. 

Be sure to have a strong, steady light on the stereo- 
graph while studying it. If practicable, let the light fall 
over your shoulder and on the face of the print. 

Take time. Go slowly. Go again and again. It would 
be impossible to take in at a glance all the interesting 
and valuable contents of any stereograph in this Swiss 
tour. If dismissed with a glance, it has not had a chance 
to give what it has to give. 

The study of the stereographs, one after another, on 
this plan, can give the larger part and the better part of 
whatever actual travel gives. There are people who 
make long journeys to famous places merely for the sake 
of being able to say they have been there. Stereographs 
will not satisfy that cheap ambition. There are people 
who go about writing their names on observation towers 
and chipping little bits of stone off famous monuments to 
carry home in their pockets. Stereographs cannot be of 
much use to travellers of that poor sort, either. But, with 
most of us, the chief satisfaction and joy of travel con- 
sist in seeing the grandeur and beauty of "this goodly 
frame, the earth in seeing how the world looks in spots 
made famous by great events or by men who lived there; 
in seeing how other men live now, and what sights of 
earth and sky are woven into their daily life-experience. 
If this is what we want, the sensible, thoughtful use of 
stereographs cannot be overestimated as a practical means 
of enlarging our knowledge and multiplying our delight. 



" To myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all 
natural scenery. In them and in the forms of inferior landscape 
that lead to them my affections are wholly bound up; and, though 
I can look with happy admiration at the lowland flowers and woods 
and open skies, the happiness is tranquil and cold. . . . But the 
slightest rise and fall in the road — a mossy bank at the side of a 
crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it, — a ripple 
over three or four stones in the stream by the bridge, — above all, a 
wild bit of ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if possibly 
one might see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will 
instantly give me intense delight, because the shadow or the hope 
of the hills is in them." 

Ruskin, in Modern Painters. 



SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE 
STEREOSCOPE 



There are many travelled ways into Switzerland, and 
one of the most interesting is from the German frontier 
on the north. The general map, No. 1, in our booklet of 
maps, shows how Alsace, Baden, Wurtemberg and Bavaria 
lie along the northern line of Switzerland. We remem- 
ber that Austria lies at the east, Italy at the south, while 
France stretches away at the west to the Atlantic shores. 

From Baden we can pass south across the frontier, en- 
tering Swiss territory a few miles distant from a famous 
cataract in the river Ehine. We shall make these Falls 
of Schaffhausen the beginning of our Swiss pilgrimage. 
Open the general map of Switzerland, Map No. 1. Our 
whole route, you see, is given here, the advance being in- 
dicated by that continuous red line with arrows. We will 
give attention now only to the starting-point of this route 
line, which is near the upper margin of the map. There 
we find the figure 1 in a circle with a zigzag line running 
to the apex of two short red lines, the place where we are 
to stand first in Switzerland. That red V indicates by 
the direction and the reach of its arms the direction and 

87 



38 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

the range of our vision. If we look carefully at the red 
V, we see it shows that we are to take our stand on the 
north bank of the Rhine, and look nearly south into the 
land of peaks and glaciers. 

1. The Falls of the Hhine and Laufen Castle, Switzer- 
land 

It is Swiss soil where we are standing now. This is 
the Rhine, the stream whose shores, farther down its 
course, becomes lined with history, romance and legend. 
Just here its course is nearly south, although we know 
its general course in this section is approximately west, 
while later on it turns towards the north and ends in the 
North Sea. It seems now in a raging hurry to find the 
sea. The bed (nearly fifty feet below this bank where we 
stand) lowers its level a hundred feet in the course of half 
a mile; no wonder the floods leap forward as we see them, 
with swirls of water and clouds of spray. They are still 
nearly twelve hundred feet above the level of the North 
Sea that waits for them, five hundred miles behind us; but 
the rest of the descent is made more gradually. These 
falls are the largest and most picturesque in the Rhine's 
whole length of about nine hundred miles. Geologists 
say it is the force of the stream itself, striking layers 
of more easily worn rock, that has eaten away the bed 
thus abruptly, letting the floods descend in this panic- 
stricken haste. The rocks above the cataract are of dif- 
ferent formation and can stand the wear of the perpetual 
downpour with much less loss of material. 



FALLS OF THE EHINE — SCHAFFHAUSEN 39 

Just look at those steep, rocky islands round which the 
waters are galloping and clamoringl They too are being 
slowly worn away by the currents. The smaller one at 
the left has been strengthened by a buttress of masonry. 
It seems difficult to believe that any landing could safely 
be made on either island, but it is so. You see that 
umbrella-shaped roof on the island at the right? It be- 
longs to a summer-house which you can visit if you like, 
hiring a boatman, a little farther down on this right bank, 
to row you over. It is not a place for amateur oarsmen! 
You can climb to that little summer-house for the view, 
then take the boat again and cross to the left bank, op- 
posite where we are now, to explore the picturesque 
grounds of Laufen Castle over yonder on the hill; but the 
castle has no traditions as interesting as those of the land 
and the river. 

This is the northernmost canton in all Switzerland, in 
fact the only one lying north of the river. In the Dark 
Ages it was peopled by the Alemanni, the Germanic an- 
cestors of the northern Swiss folk. Tradition says the 
Alemanni believed that this rushing stream was a live 
Thing with a mysterious will of its own, and they tried to 
propitiate its mighty influence by the sacrifice, here at 
these falls, of beautiful white horses. 

The stream is rushing on to see a host of places famous 
in story and song. What other river in the world has 
such a list? Basle, Spires, Mannheim, Worms, Mainz, 
Coblentz, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Wesel, Arnheim, Utrecht, 
Leyden, — it seems when one runs over the names as if 



40 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

half the history of Europe had the Ehine running through 
it. On the other hand, a river whose waters come on and 
on and on, never ceasing, always advancing, makes us won- 
der about its source. And now we have the delights of 
discovery before us; for, in the course of our Swiss jour- 
neyings we shall go far up into the very heart of the 
Alps where this noble Ehine is born. Again and again 
we shall come upon valley streams that feed it; we shall 
even tread the glaciers whose melting gives birth to those 
tributary streams. In early spring, before the hot south 
winds have had time to thaw the mountain snows, the 
river here before us lowers so far as to leave many of 
those obstructing rocks in the bed standing out like huge 
stepping-stones. But now the sun and the wind are at 
work on the mountains and we see the result before us 
in these roaring floods. 

There is a fascination in the sight of falls like these, 
but we are anxious to see what lies beyond those wooded 
hills across the river. Let us move on towards the moun- 
tains. Turn to the general map of Switzerland, Map No. 
1, and you will see that our first advance takes us about 
forty miles southeast, to St. Gall. There a zigzag line 
runs from the red 2 to the apex of the red lines, which 
indicates our standpoint. The spread of the V shows the 
direction and range of our view. 



THE TOWN OF ST. GALL 



41 



2. St. Gall, historic and beautiful,— once a famous 
seat of learning 

This is a delightful spot up here on the sunshiny hill- 
side overlooking the town. Let us sit on the grass and 
enjoy the view. The neat, well-kept air of this little or- 
chard is thoroughly characteristic of the thrifty Swiss 
management. Those buildings are of a type common in 
all the larger towns; but out in the country very different 
styles of building prevail; we shall see both town houses 
and country chalets at close range during our journey. 

St. Gall is a comfortable, commonplace town to-day, 
suggesting to the casual looker-on very little of the ser- 
vice it once rendered to the rest of the world. We have 
often been told in a general way that through the Dark 
Ages it was the scholarly enthusiasm and devotion of the 
early Church that alone kept classic learning from dying 
off the face of the earth. Here in St. Gall was one such 
centre for the guarding of the intellectual treasures of 
Greece and Eome. It came about in this way. You see 
the building over there at the foot of the hill, with twin 
towers standing up from the mass of crowded roofs? 
That is the cathedral church, once belonging to an an- 
cient monastery. The actual building which we see now 
was erected in the eighteenth century to replace an older 
one that could stand no longer, and that older church 
was itself the successor of another and another; the line 
actually runs back almost to the picturesque times that 
we read of in the old romances when King Arthur of 



42 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



England organized the Knights of the Round Table and 
when Sir Galahad went out in his adventurous quest for 
the Holy Grail. It was away back in the year 614 that 
an Irish monk named Gilian crossed the channel and 
came over here to what was then a heathen wilderness, to 
bring word about a better life. He built a hut down 
near the site of that church, with prowling bears for his 
most sociable neighbors, and began to make friendly ad- 
vances to the half -savage folk who lived in the vicinity. 
He was a man gifted with common-sense as well as de- 
voutness. He showed the people how to live better in 
this world as well as how to get ready for another world; 
he taught them to burn lime and build substantial houses 
of stone, showed them how to spin and weave and how to 
cultivate the wild grapevines. Naturally, he came in time 
to have a great influence over the people to whom he could 
give so much help. His hermitage grew into a church 
with a dwelling-house attached to it. Then other devoted 
Irishmen came to help him, and the modest establishment 
grew into a little monastery with a staff of teachers in 
both religious and secular lines. 

Marauders came over from Hungary every now and 
then, a set of robbers who laid the land waste wherever 
they went. The monastery then became the people's 
refuge. Its buildings were surrounded by a high wall set 
with watch-towers, and when an alarm came the people 
for miles around fled from their scattered cabins to the 
abbot's protection. The buildings within the protecting 
wall practically constituted a small fortified town, — the 



THE TOWN OF ST. GALL 



43 



beginning of what is here to-day a city of twenty-seven 
thousand inhabitants. 

And it went on growing. As the number of educated 
men increased, through the spread of learning among the 
clever boys of the region, it became possible to carry on 
more and more lines of work. There was a school for 
the study of the Greek and Latin classics and of the writ- 
ings of the Church Fathers. Young men eagerly copied 
by hand the works of Cicero and Virgil and Quintilian; 
they wrote out with beautifully ornamented borders and 
capital letters the Gospels and Epistles and other books 
that treated of Christian history and doctrine. Some of 
their old MSS. can be seen now in the library yonder. 
Other men, whose talents were of a different order, were 
teachers and students in something like a modern agricul- 
tural college combined with a manual training school. 
Still others studied medicine after the manner of those 
days, compounding syrups and cordials in the laboratory 
and caring for the sick of the neighborhood in a free hos- 
pital. The establishment was, in fact, a huge " institu- 
tional church," a thousand years before we thought we 
had invented the idea. 

A monk: here at St. Gall made one of the very first at- 
tempts to put the German speech of his time into writing. 
To contemporary eyes it was like trying to capture on 
paper the strange dialect of Zulus or Hottentots, — so 
young, after all, is the noble literature of Germany! 

The power of the St. Gall monastery grew steadily. 
In the thirteenth century the abbots here were recog- 



44 SWITZEKLAND THKOtJGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

nized as princes of the Holy Roman Empire. But during 
the time of the Crusades St. Gall, like other towns, grew 
richer through the increase of trade, and became less de- 
pendent on the local abbot. There were quarrels and 
struggles. Finally the French Revolution put an end to 
the monastery as an institution. The Abbey was sup- 
pressed in 1805, and now there is only the tradition of its 
grandeur. It had its faults; but in its best days it was 
one of the most helpful centres of civilization in all 
Europe. 

For the sake of what the ancient Abbey was, let us go 
down the hill to that church standing on its site. 

3* Luxurious interior of the Monastery Church , 
St. Gall 

Whether we share the faith of a people or not, there is 
always something impressive about the buildings they 
raise for their worship. Perhaps we to-day would not 
naturally express ourselves through such florid ornament 
as this, but it was quite in keeping with the German- 
Swiss taste of the eighteenth century; and when we think 
of the sturdy old monks who worked so hard here long 
ago for the love of God and the love of their fellow-men, 
we feel that it is a sacred place. 

The Romanesque or " round-arched Gothic" style in 
which this church is built was a favorite form of church 
architecture all through Central Europe in the Middle 
Ages. We ourselves are likely to have a taste for the more 
aspiring, poetic forms of the pointed Gothic architec- 



THE CHURCH OF ST. GALL 



45 



ture, like that of favorite French and English cathedrals, 
but there is a good deal to say for the simple, dignified 
solidity of these less subtle lines of arch and column. 
The abbots of St. Grail, in their day, trained many a bright 
boy into an architect and master-builder. For centuries 
and centuries theirs were the only schools in which an 
ambitious lad could get any help on the fascinating prob- 
lems of building. The monks were the only ones who 
understood mathematics and who had access to the trea- 
tises of the old Eoman authorities on stone construction; 
besides, they used to visit and correspond with brethren 
at a distance, and so keep informed about new ideas. It 
was about the time when Gilian, the travelling preacher, 
came over here from Ireland, that the Greek church- 
builders over around Constantinople studied out the way 
to support a dome-shaped roof like the one we see here. 
The problem had never been solved in ancient Eome. 
The Soman's nearest approach to it was what we see in 
the Pantheon, — the capping of a cylindric wall with a 
rounding cover. How to make a square support a circle — 
that was for centuries too hard a question. Then along 
came some man who thought of doing just what we see 
here. Stout, solid piers, firmly braced to bear a heavy 
weight without spreading, were used as starting-points 
for wall-sections like those at the right and left of the 
chancel-arch here in this church; the sections, you see, 
are fan-shaped and at the same time curved; they rise and 
at the same time draw in towards each other so as finally 
to join each other, their upper edges forming a contin- 



46 SWITZEELAND THEOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 

nous circle. And there yon have it. The circular dome 
has a place to rest, and yet the supports below are not 
monotonous cylindric walls. It is a commonplace thing 
in modern building, but the time was once when it was 
a great discovery. 

St. Gall is the chief town of a canton of the same 
name, and the Catholic Church is strong here. The can- 
tons vary as to the relative preponderance of Catholics 
and Protestants. The canton of Zurich, lying forty miles 
directly west of here, is distinctly Protestant. Its chief 
city has been a stronghold of Protestantism since the 
great movement of the sixteenth century; it is, besides, 
a famous centre of university life and a place of growing 
commercial importance. We will make Zurich our next 
objective point. 

Look at the general map again, and you will find our 
next position given near the number 4,, almost directly 
south of our first position. Again the V shows in what 
direction we are to look; it is nearly north. In order to 
see as much as possible from one spot, we are to climb to 
the roof of a hotel (the Bellevue) in the heart of the 
town. See; the map shows that just the outlet of the 
lake of Zurich will be in sight — most of its bed will be 
behind us. 

4. Zurich, the Metropolis of Switzerland 
A beautiful town, is it not? Over ninety thousand 
people call this their home, and thousands of university 
students from all nations look back here with affectionate 
memory. 



THE OLD TOWN OF ZUEICH 



47 



Lake Zurich is behind us as we stand here, and the 
river Limmat, down below us, is carrying the lake waters 
north to offer them to the Ehine. We are looking in the 
direction of Baden. The storied Black Forest is only 
fifty miles distant beyond those hills. 

That building we see at the extreme left is the Stadt- 
haus. The church with the sharply pointed spire, a few 
rods beyond, is the Frauenkirehe. In the ninth century 
it belonged to a nunnery, where two German princesses 
ruled their meek court. Ladies of high degree had to 
be provided with some sort of official protection in those 
hard-fighting days, and no doubt the daughters of Ger- 
man Ludwig were thankful for this haven. The stone- 
arched bridge that crosses the river beyond is, like the 
church building itself, a modernized revision of a ninth- 
century original. Switzerland is full of these reminders 
of feudal times and the Age of Chivalry. That church 
farther down the left bank of the river, — beyond the 
bridge, — is St. Peter's, where the famous Lavater 
preached in the eighteenth century. He was the man, 
you remember, who did so much towards elevating the 
study of physiognomy into really scientific work, — a good 
soul too. The French soldier who murdered him, during 
the sack of the town in 1799, had just been offered his 
kindliest hospitality! Perhaps he is consoled for the 
rather slow development of his own pet science by the 
phenomenal growth of electrical science, whose small be- 
ginnings came in his lifetime. Those dials in the tower 
of his old church register the movements of a wonderful 



48 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

electric clock. The dials themselves are nearly thirty 
feet in diameter and readable from a long distance. 

Zwingli was a still more celebrated preacher in the 
city of Zurich. The people of the old church did not 
love him much in the sixteenth century; he was a power- 
ful fighter in the wordy wars of theological dispute; but 
even his opponents recognized that he was a great man. 
His name stands alongside those of Luther and Calvin, 
as one of the makers of the Protestant Church. That 
church we see at the extreme right, the one with the two 
square towers, is where Zwingli used to expound the new 
faith and do it with such vigorous emphasis. The church 
dates away back to the days of Charlemagne, though these 
particular walls and towers were built later. Charle- 
magne took an especial friendly interest in this church 
in those early days before there was any distinct division 
in the faith. He made a great many donations to the 
church funds, and, in remembrance of his generosity, a 
statue of the royal benefactor was placed long ago on one 
of the western towers. 

But for several centuries the city has stood more for 
practical advance than for romantic retrospect. It has 
offered a refuge to brilliant thinkers of all sorts who 
could not safely do their thinking at home, — theologians, 
scientists, politicians, litterateurs. The first complete 
Bible that ever was printed in the English language (Cov- 
erdale's) was printed here in Zurich in 1535. The Uni- 
versity of Zurich is known all around the world for the 
cosmopolitan inclusiveness of its roll of students and 



ZUEICH OF TO-DAY 



49 



for the eminence of its professors. The university build- 
ings and those of the Polytechnic School (another gov- 
ernment institution) are beyond the twin-towered Gross- 
miinster and more to our right. They sometimes call 
this Swiss town "Athens on the Limmat." 

Then, besides being learned, Zurich is notably enter- 
prising and prosperous in the way of manufactures and 
trade. It has large silk, cotton, linen and woollen mills 
that give employment to an army of thrifty operatives. 
Iron manufactures too are in a flourishing condition, 
turning out great quantities of modern machinery for 
which there is a steadily increasing demand. The town 
has an exceedingly picturesque past, as we should find if 
we lingered to study up its mediaeval history, but still 
more characteristically, it has an intellectual and indus- 
trial future. The world is going to hear more about 
Zurich as time goes on. 

Among the Zurich folk whose writings are well known 
in other lands is Johanna Spyri. Her stories of Swiss 
country life are delightful in their frank, simple fashion. 
Of course the most striking features of Swiss country life 
are to be found farther in towards the heart of the moun- 
tains; yet, even here, near the large towns, we can find 
country villages that look to the tourist as if they were 
made to illustrate a story! Just glance at one country 
hamlet a little way out from town. 



50 SWITZEBLAND THBOUGH THE STEKEOSCOPE 



5. The Village Favorite 

The traditional costumes of Swiss girls are among the 
most charming to be seen anywhere in Europe. Alas, 
that the temporary commonplaces of French dressmakers 
should come to take their place! If Swiss girls realized 
the effectiveness of their full-sleeved chemisettes, laced 
bodices and dainty aprons, they would never be deluded 
into giving them up to follow the whims of the Parisian 
demi-monde. 

" But, there ! I tell my daughter, 
Folks don't do's they'd ought-ter." 

In a few years, thanks to the spread of railways and 
fashion-plates, there will be left hardly a vestige of the 
beautiful old costumes, except in tableaux and historical 
collections. 

These village houses are of the regulation country 
type, with their timbered walls, unpainted, and flat roofs 
loaded with stones. That church steeple, shaped like a 
candle-extinguisher, shows a favorite Swiss form, too. 
It is somewhat like St. Peter's, that we lately saw in 
Zurich (Stereograph 4). 

The Swiss villagers are thrifty, self-respecting people. 
They make use of every bit of ground, and some way 
manage to live comfortably on incomes that would dis- 
courage Americans. They furnish a very good object- 
lesson in steady-going, contented industry and economy. 
We admire them for it! Yes, we do. And yet we have 



A COUNTRY VILLAGE 



51 



come to Switzerland more for nature's grandeur and his- 
tory's romance than for the prose of village life. We are 
eager for mountain peaks, literal and figurative. Very 
well. Those are waiting for us; and we cannot find a 
better place for our first sight of Alpine heights than is 
given us at Lucerne. 

Have you a perfectly clear remembrance of the location 
of lake and town? If not, the maps are here to help. 



LUCERNE 



Look first at the same general map which we have con- 
sulted before (Map 1) and find Lucerne. It is about 
twenty miles southwest of Zurich, at the northern outlet 
of Lake Lucerne. This gives us our idea of its location 
in Switzerland as a whole. It is forty miles south of the 
German frontier, and about midway between the lands 
of France and Austria. 

Now look at Map No. 2, where the region around the 
lake is taken out of the whole country and enlarged. 
The mountains evidently have the right of way and the 
lake occupies such room as there is left between them, 
doubtless making up in depth what it cannot have in 
width. A zigzag line runs from the red 6, in the upper 
left-hand corner of the map, to the spot where we are to 
stand next. You see by the spreading of the red lines 
which mark the limits of our vision from that point that 
we shall be looking a little south of east, across the re- 
markably crooked bed of the lake and over toward the 
mountains on the eastern shore. 

6*. Lucerne and Her Beautiful Lake 

Here at last are the mountains! See how they rise, 
one beyond another, as far as we can see towards the 

52 



THE TOWN OF LUCERNE 



53 



southeast. Those farthest peaks must be the Mythen, 
over in Schwyz, the little canton whose name has come 
to he applied to the whole country of which it is geo- 
graphically a small part. The dark ridge at the extreme 
left is the Rigi, a favorite point from which to get a 
broad, comprehensive view of the Alps. People used to 
climb it on foot or on mule-back; now there is a cog- 
wheel railway that takes you up to the big hotel on the 
summit in time to see the sunset and the after-glow, and 
brings you down again after you have watched the sun rise. 

Meanwhile here is the town of Lucerne, nestled under 
the hill where we stand. We must see something of 
Lucerne, for it is one of the quaintest old towns in Swit- 
zerland. Turn to Map No. 3 and you have a still further 
enlargement of a little district just at the head of the 
lake, including the town and some of the immediately 
surrounding hills. Our standpoint is repeated on this 
map (note the red 6 with its diverging lines starting from 
near the left edge of the map), and now we can identify 
many of the places of interest we see in the city by re- 
ferring to this map. 

The general character of the big, bare, stone houses is 
like St. Gall. 

The river Eeuss is flowing towards us under those 
bridges yonder. It speeds along through the old town 
to pour itself into the Aare, and, by way of the Aare, into 
the Rhine. The waters that we see here are on ;heir 
way to Holland and the Worth Sea. 

Some of the bridges over the Eeuss are curious old 



54 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

structures. The farther bridge that we see now, — the 
one nearest the lake, — is modern, and so is the one near- 
est to us; but the one between them, which stands diagon- 
ally across the stream, with a tower just beyond it, is a 
relic of the middle ages, the Kapellbriicke. We will go 
nearer to it by and by, for it is a famous old structure, 
one of the curiosities of Lucerne. The statement has 
been made that the tower was in the old Eoman days a 
lighthouse (lucerna), and that it gave the town its name; 
but the best authorities think it belonged to a mediaeval 
system of fortification, intended to protect the town from 
the approach of enemies by water. 

That is a J esuit church which we see near the bend of 
the river. It was built in the seventeenth century, and 
just behind it stands a government building which was in 
old times a Jesuit college. The public museum is just 
this side of the old college, guarding a wealth of local 
curiosities and historic relics which it would be interest- 
ing to see. The fine buildings farther up the river bank, 
toward the lake, are modern theatres and hotels. 
Lucerne is one of the most popular tourist centres in 
all Switzerland. 

Look for the big dome of the St. Gotthard railway sta- 
tion, just over the twin towers of the old church. A railway 
station is not in itself a thing of beauty or romance — but 
this particular railroad is both beautiful and romantic. 
We shall come upon it in several places as it climbs over 
the Alps towards Italy. Lucerne and Milan are the ter- 
mini of the line. 



THE OLD KAPELLBRUCKE, LUCERNE 



55 



Look at the lake once more before we cross the river 
to the other part of the town. You can see from here 
a little of its irregularity, though to appreciate that fully 
you should look down on it from some neighboring 
height. 

The long, low wooded hills directly opposite us are, 
you see, not at the foot of the Rigi, but on the point of 
land called the Meggenhorn (see Map 2), separating two 
of the lake's many deep bays. At the right of the Meg- 
genhorn, near that farther stretch of water below the 
mass of the Eigi range, is a tiny strip of land only about 
two miles by three, Gersau, which was for four centuries 
the smallest independent state in all Europe. The peo- 
ple bought their freedom from the ruling nobles, and 
from 1390 to 1798 were governed by a council of their 
own. Then the French broke up their independence and 
after a while the district became a part of the canton of 
Schwyz. Truly one has to come to Switzerland to find 
the practical beginnings of modern democracy. 

If we go down from this high hill where we now 
stand, at the western edge of the town, we can get a 
nearer view of the old Kapellbrucke and the Water 
Tower, before we cross the river. The red lines con- 
nected with the number 7 on Map No. 3 show what are to 
be our position and field of vision. 

7. The Picturesque Bridge, Tower and Church of 
Old Lucerne 

What a queer, rambling structure the old bridge is. 
We see now that it is even more irregular in direction 



56 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE. 

than it appeared to be when we were up on the hill, look- 
ing down. We can see, too, that the overhanging roof 
leaves open spaces at the side for air and light. Passers 
wish there might be even more light inside, for this bridge 
has a most unusual feature; it has painted pictures hung 
from the rafters for the instruction of those who pass 
over. There are over seventy pictures to be seen as you 
pass along, though age and a dim light make them more 
or less indistinct. If you cross in one direction you can 
observe a sort of sectional picture-book of early Swiss 
history. Keturning, you see another set of seventy-odd 
pictures, — a series of scenes in the lives of St. Maurice 
and St. Leodegar. Farther down the Eeuss at our left 
(out of sight from where we stand now) is another simi- 
larly covered bridge, where there are curious old allegori- 
cal pictures showing the approach of Death to different 
kinds of people, — to an old man, a young bride, a prince, 
a beggar, — all sorts and conditions of men. You remem- 
ber Longfellow in the " Golden Legend " makes Elsie 
and Prince Henry cross that bridge on their journey to- 
wards Italy, lingering to talk over the ideas of the differ- 
ent panels. 

We are looking now nearly northeast. The church 
with the cylindric tower over near the farther end of this 
bridge is St. Peter's. The church with two towers, far- 
ther up on the slope of the hill, is the Hofkirche. 
Lucerne is strongly Eoman Catholic in its religion. We 
must go over on that hill behind the Hofkirche to get a 
view of the mountain magnificence that lies behind us 



THE LION OF LUCEENE 



57 



now; but, on the way, we will make a detour to the left, 
up that street where we can trace the row of buildings 
leading obliquely over the hill. That is the Street of the 
Lion, — the Lion of Lucerne, that we have known all our 
lives in casts and photographs and wood-carvings. Map 
No. 3 shows, with a red 8 near its northern margin, the 
location of the famous rock-sculpture. 

8. The Lion of Lucerne 

Art critics may discourse as wisely as they like about 
the sentimentality of Thorwaldsen's conception, and its 
inaccuracy in the matter of zoological anatomy; the fact 
remains that there is something very dignified and 
pathetic in the effect of this unique monument. It is 
carved, as we see, in the face of a ledge of sandstone. 
Water trickles over the face of the ledge and is gradually 
wearing off some of its lines. We can read easily the 
Latin inscription over the carved recess: "To the faith- 
fulness and valor of the Swiss but parts of the detailed 
inscription below are becoming illegible. The sculpture 
itself is about twenty-eight feet long and eighteen feet 
high. We all know the story. A regiment of eight hun- 
dred Swiss soldiers, sworn to the service of Louis XVI of 
France, were the appointed guards of the Tuileries on 
that fateful August day in 1792 when the King was sum- 
moned before the popular assembly. As soon as the 
royal family had left the palace a howling mob rushed in 
to take possession. The leader of the mob ordered the 
Guards to surrender their charge. One of the Swiss 



58 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE. 



officers answered: " What you ask is an insult. The Swiss 
do not give up their arms. We will not leave our post of 
duty." 

There were eight hundred Swiss, but the rioters num- 
bered thousands. The Guards fought well; each man de- 
fended his place till he was overpowered and murdered; 
but at the end of the day the palace was sacked and set 
on fire. Every Swiss was dead. 

It was some fifty years later that the Danish sculptor, 
Thorwaldsen, designed this memorial. The lion means, 
of course, the Swiss, strong and fearless. The shield 
with the Greek cross is an emblem of the home-land, 
Switzerland. The shield with the fleur-de-lis is the em- 
blem of France. A spear has killed the lion, but even 
as he dies he guards the emblems of both lands, his head 
sinking on the lilies of France. 

The Swiss had for several centuries the custom of en- 
tering the military service of other nations, and the fact 
has sometimes been used as a reproach. But there are 
always two ways of looking at a thing. Said a critical 
foreigner one day to a Swiss: "The difference between 
us is, you fight for money, — we fight for glory." 

"Yes; — we both fight for what we haven't got." 

Map No. 3 shows marked with a 9 a place on this same 
hill, a few rods east of the Lion, a good standpoint from 
which to look back, southward, across the outlet of the 
lake. Now look at the upper left corner of the preced- 
ing map, No. 2. Here the proposed standpoint 9 is 
located in such a way as to show what there is to see 



PILATUS AND ITS LEGENDS 



59 



beyond the lakeside town. We shall look across to Mount 
Pilatus, — Pilate's Mountain. 

9. Lucerne and the Lofty Pilatus 

This magnificent peak was all the time behind us, a 
little at our right, while we stood on the hill west of the 
town looking down on the river (Stereograph 6). The 
building with the two steeples, just before us, is the Hof- 
kirche, a sixteenth-century church that we noticed when 
we were standing by the farther end of the Kapellbriicke 
(Stereograph 7). We can see just a bit of the bridge 
now, with the old Water Tower beside it, at the extreme 
right, over the roof of that enormous hotel. The open 
bridge, at the left of the Water Tower, is the one which 
we saw before at the right of the tower (Stereograph 7). 
The elegant modern buildings near the end of the bridge 
are the hotels which we noticed before. That is the St. 
Grotthard railway station at the left, opposite where we 
stand. 

How big and grim the mountain towers, over there 
above the town. There is no end to the strange stories 
about Pilate's Mountain. The legend is that the old 
governor of Judaea, falling into disgrace with the em- 
peror, was thrown into prison at Rome and there killed 
himself. His body was refused formal respect and 
merely thrown into the Tiber; but the river refused to 
hold the remains of so vile a man, and showed its wrath 
by dreadful storms and floods, so that the corpse had to 



60 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

be taken out again. It was taken to Lyons and east into 
the Rhone; but the Rhone likewise rebelled with violent 
storms. It was offered to Lake Geneva, but the lake rose 
in righteous wrath and would have none of him. This 
mountain overlooking Lake Lucerne had a lake away up 
near the summit. The cursed body was taken up there 
and the lake was allowed to rage as much as it liked, un- 
able, on account of its remoteness, to do much harm; and, 
after a while, a wise and holy man managed someway to 
bring about an agreement between the spirits and the 
plain people living in the neighborhood. The lake was to 
be kept reasonably quiet all but one day each year. On 
Good Friday Pilate's unquiet ghost was to be free to 
roam about the mountain to relieve its awful misery; but 
whoever approached it on that day did so at his peril. 
One glimpse of the spirit's flame-red robe meant certain 
death to any mortal reckless enough to try the experi- 
ment of a Good-Friday excursion up the mountain. In 
fact, it was seldom anybody dared go up at any time of 
year. In 1387 six priests who made the ascent were 
actually imprisoned, on their return, for doing a thing 
which might prove so dangerous to the villagers! As late 
as 1518 four men who had the courage to climb the 
mountain had to sue for the permission of the govern- 
ment before they made the ascent. 

And these are not the only strange tales that are told 
about Pilatus. Local records gravely declare that about 
five hundred years ago a village cooper, climbing up the 
side of the mountain, fell into a cave inhabited by huge 



THE ASCENT OF PILATUS 



61 



dragons. He lived there for six months in mortal terror 
of the supernatural creatures; then one day, when one of 
the dragons flew out of the opening in the roof of the 
cave, the cooper caught hold of the monsters tail and 
rose with him into the air, dropping after a while to the 
ground, safe and well, and going home to cheer his 
mourning family. And how can we refuse to believe this 
tale, when the church here within a stone's throw of us, 
owns a communion service given to it by the thankful 
cooper, all engraved with pictures illustrating his exciting 
adventure? Another man saw the dragon too. The 
beast was flying across from the Bigi (behind us and to 
our left) to Pilatus, and dropped a dragon-stone in pass- 
ing. Moreover, the dragon-stone is at this very day in 
the museum building over near the Jesuit church at the 
other side of the river! And as for such comparatively 
unremarkable neighbors as gnomes, they used to be com- 
mon all over the wooded and rocky slopes of Pilatus, — 
wee men about a foot high, with long, white beards and 
bright red caps, exactly as we knew them in our child- 
hood's fairy stories. Pilatus used to be a wonderful 
mountain! 

To-day the Lucerne folk seldom look to Pilatus for any 
more occult experience than a foresight of the weather. 

"Hat Pilatus seinen Hut, 
Dann wird das Wetter gut. 
Tragt er aber einen Degen, 
So giebt's wohl sicher Regen." 

If the peak has merely a cap of cloud, fine weather is to 



62 SWITZEELAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



be expected; but if a streak of cloud cuts across the top, 
that means rain. 

It seems almost brutally prosaic to ascend this storied 
mountain in a railway train and eat dinner in a hotel on 
the summit, but times change, and we might as well 
change with them. Besides, the view from that sharp- 
pointed peak up there, the central pinnacle of the whole 
mass, is something never to be forgotten. 

Map No. 2 shows our route to the top of Pilatus. We 
can go by rail (a branch of the St. G-otthard railway) from 
the station opposite here, following south along the lake 
shore to Stad, or we can go to the same point by a little 
steamboat. At Stad we take seats in another railway 
train and climb the mountain. At first the road runs up 
through fields and beech woods; then we pass through a 
belt of pine forest; above the pines comes a region of high, 
open pastures; and then, above even the pastures, we 
come to bare cliffs. We mount over 5,300 feet in a dis- 
tance of two and three-quarters miles. The figure 10 in 
red, part way up the mountain slope, as shown in Map 
No. 2, shows a point where we can stay for a few minutes 
to study the wonderful construction of the railroad. 

10. An Alpine Elevator to the Clouds ; Mount Pilatus 

If the sight of the finished road makes you a bit dizzy, 
think of the workmen who hung, suspended by ropes from 
the cliffs above, while they hewed at the rocks and made 
ready the blasts for this marvelous road-bed. The road 



THE SUMMIT OF PILATUS 



63 



rises at an angle of from 42 degrees to 48 degrees, a large 
part of the way. Sometimes it lies along an artificial 
shelf, sometimes it bores through a mass of rock; both 
open track and tunnel we can see here. 

The cross-barred planks alongside the railroad track 
furnish a path where one can climb on foot if he prefers; 
but, as for safety, the railroad track and the cars are 
admirably planned. Cogs on the centre rail fit corre- 
sponding parts in the running gear of engine and car, 
making it possible to stop instantly and stand locked ab- 
solutely fast, however steep the incline. Trains go up to 
the summit in about an hour and a half, moving two hun- 
dred feet in a minute, but going down the advance is 
made more slowly. All the bridges are of solid masonry. 
It is a wonderful piece of engineering, and it was accom- 
plished in about four hundred actual working days. 

Look once more at Map No. 2. A little above the 
point marked 10, where we made our last observations, 
there is another point marked 11. We will pause again 
there and look north to the summit of the mountain. 

11. The Summit of Historic PUatus 

You remember that when we were down in Lucerne 
near the Hofkirche (Stereograph 9), we noted one par- 
ticularly sharp peak on the summit? Here at the right, 
just ahead, is that very pinnacle, the railway curving 
around its base. That is an old hotel which you see 
standing at the end of the railway — (you can see its dark 
roof -line against the sky); it is nowhere near capacious 



64 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE. 

enough for the tourists who mount to the summit since 
the railway was built. Now that huge new hotel at the 
left is none too large. What would the sixteenth-cen- 
tury cooper think of this modern throng of tourists, — 
the cooper who fell into the dragon's cave and gave the 
communion service to the church in gratitude for his de- 
liverance from this haunt of demons! 

The zigzag lines up the steep slopes just in front of 
us? Those are old bridle paths and foot paths used by 
mountain climbers before the completion of the railroad. 
The section of path which we see here is simple and safe 
enough, but there are parts of the ascent where one needs 
a sure foot and a steady head, and where any venture- 
some wandering from the accustomed track can be under- 
taken by a stranger only with some risk of breaking his 
neck. 

We begin now to see how difficult it is to make a cor- 
rect estimate of dimensions and distances up here among 
the mountains. At the first glance, we might take that 
mass of rock at the right to be the size of a cottage house; 
but — no! We recognize the dark line encircling its base 
as the railroad track. It is as wide there at the foot of 
the cliff as it was when we just looked at it below the 
tunnel (Stereograph 10). We realize, after a little effort, 
that the height of the rock-mass is more like that of an 
enormous cathedral! We shall meet with more and more 
just such deceptive sights as we continue our journey. 

Now a glance at the maps in order to get our bearings 
for our next position. Map No. 2 shows that our stand- 



"THE BACKBONE OF EUROPE " 



65 



point is to be at 12, on the top of the mass of rock whose 
height we have been trying to estimate. The lines 
diverging from 12 actually extend and spread far beyond 
the limits of this little map, No. 2. We can see their real 
range better by turning back to the general map of Swit- 
zerland (Map "No. 1). There we see the southern outlook 
from Pilatus plainly marked out by the lines diverging 
from the figure 12. Their length shows that we are to 
see a distance of between forty and fifty miles, over into 
the Bernese Oberland. 

12. The Backbone of Europe, from the Summit of 
Pilatus 

This is a view that cannot be taken in hastily. It is 
impossible that we should estimate distances correctly at 
first; but let the eye proceed gradually outward and we 
begin to see that everything is greater than it first looked 
to be. This knoll down below us in the immediate fore- 
ground is — no, it is not precisely a " knoll " after all. It 
is much larger and much farther away than it seemed at 
first. The doll-like figures of those men down there help 
us to realize the distance at which they stand. The snow- 
streaked ridge beyond is at least three times as long as it 
looks, and the rounding dome at the farther end of the 
ridge is a summit called the Matthorn, only a few hundred 
feet lower than our own standpoint. 

As we stand now the town of Lucerne is behind us, and 
the lake is down at our left side. 

What a magnificent mountain wall we see before us at 



66 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

the south! They are the peaks of the Bernese Oberland 
that stand there, apparently crowded into a compact mass. 
We shall thread our way in between those peaks and see 
them much nearer. Here we get only a general idea of 
the way in which their broken, ice-clothed masses stand 
like a dividing barrier across central Europe. Just think 
how much the history of the nations has been shaped by 
the uncompromising stand of the Swiss mountain ranges! 
The farther, southern slopes of the Alps face the blue 
Mediterranean. The rivers on that side run into the 
Adriatic Sea. The land on that side is the homeland of 
the old Roman Empire. Though the Roman power did 
creep up into some of these Swiss valleys it never spread 
northward, this way, in any great overwhelming tide. 
The sturdy Germanic folk were never swallowed up in 
that great political " combine." Their geographical sep- 
aration kept them a sturdy, primitive folk, full of vigor, 
ignorant of the demoralizing subtleties and refinements of 
the old civilization. Had these mountain walls not stood 
here, — had the Roman legions established the imperial 
eagles all the way up to the North Sea, we should have a 
very different history of Europe to read now. Just what 
the history might have been we can theorize for ourselves; 
but we can be sure that the growth of European civiliza- 
tion would have shaped itself in some entirely different 
form. 

We can identify a few of the most famous peaks in the 
Oberland range there before us. You see a pointed sum- 
mit at the extreme right? That is the Tschingelhorn. 



"THE BACKBONE OF EUROPE " 



67 



The one at the left of that outermost peak is the Breit- 
horn. 

The Silberhorn and the Jungfrau are the two still far- 
ther toward the left. Next yon see a larger pyramidal 
mass, quite dark, on this northerly side? That is the 
Eiger (or " Ogre and the snow-covered Monch is be- 
yond, seen around the Eiger^s left shoulder. 

That curving valley almost exactly opposite where we 
stand (the valley that curves around toward the left 
among those distant mountains like a gleaming shell) is 
the nest of the Lower Grindelwald Glacier. We shall see 
that much nearer by and by. The first sharp-pointed 
peak that stands up distinctly against the sky at the left 
(that is, at the east) of the glacier, is a part of the Fie- 
scherhorn. The next in view against the sky is the Wet- 
terhorn (the "Storm Peak"); beyond that is the 
Schreckhorn, or Terror Peak; and still farther to the 
east the Finsteraarhorn (Dark Eagle Peak) ends the series 
of those most conspicuous horizon notches. 

Fifty years ago hardly any of those mountain summits 
had been climbed. They were regarded with far-off won- 
der and awe and more or less superstitious fear. To-day 
there are men who know them ail with the intimate 
friendship of skilled mountaineers. Every peak that we 
see has been climbed by ardent Alpinists, and every peak 
— so they say — has its own special glories and terrors. 

Shall we go back, down to the level of Lake Lucerne, 
and see something of its shores? The waters reach out 
in all directions between the mountains, making the lake 



68 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE. 



as a whole extravagantly irregular in shape. See Map 
~No. 2 where the shore is all outlined. Excursion steam- 
ers are continually going and coming around those points 
and into those deep bays. We can easily get passage 
across to Brunnen on the farther shore, directly east from 
Pilatus. Do you find the place? It is just at the east- 
ernmost part of the lake where there is a sudden turn in 
the shore line from east-and-west to north-and-south. 
A mile out from Brunnen there is a hill called the Axen- 
stein, from which we can get a particularly good view 
back across the lake, towards Pilatus. The spot is 
marked 13 on the map, and the lines connected with this 
number show that we shall be looking due west. 

13. The Lake of Lucerne from the Axenstein 

This Axenstein is counted only a hill, here in Switzer- 
land, and yet the hotel terrace, where we stand, is one 
thousand feet above the water. The wooded slope 
straight before us, at the left, is a part of what the map 
calls the Sonnenburg. It is historic ground, for a little 
farther south (i.e., to the left) on the lake shore, is the 
spot where, in 1307, representatives of the three cantons of 
XTri, Schwyz and Unterwalden had their famous meeting 
and swore to stand by each other in the struggle to make 
Switzerland free from Austrian domination. According 
to tradition, William TelFs famous leap from the boat 
was made a few miles to our left, on the side of the lake 
where we are now; and Gessler and his men, after losing 



LAKE lucerne' fromj'the axenstein 69 

their prisoner, are said to have gone along past this very 
shore and landed at Brunnen, a mile farther to our right. 

You ean see from here a bit of the irregularity of the 
lake-shore. The greatest area of waters is out of sight, 
behind that dark, precipitous hill which stands opposite 
the Sonnenburg. That long ridge just west of us, above 
the farther shore, is the Burgenstock, and above the Bur- 
genstock in the distance we see Pilatus again, towering 
over the surrounding country. We can easily make out 
the highest point, where we climbed to get our view of 
the Bernese range. (Stereograph 12). 

Just think how enormously deep the water must be in 
this crooked crevice between the mountains. The little 
steamer away out there by the second point of land is to 
the water's depth like what a dry leaf might be on the 
surface of an ordinary lake. All the lake excursions are 
beautiful here, but so are the walks and drives. Do you 
see the road along the northern shore, where it clings to 
the foot of the mountain-side over yonder, just above the 
shore line? Every rod of that road has its own beautiful 
views over the lake, but perhaps there is no one any finer 
than this from the Axenstein. 

Just see how tenderly the air enfolds those distant 
mountains and softens their hard lines into gentle hazi- 
ness. Farther and farther away, paler and softer and 
more hazily, mysteriously charming — that is the way with 
the Swiss peaks. They peer over each other's shoulder 
to call us with their strange, fascinating language of form 
and color. 



70 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

No wonder that Lake Lucerne is beloved of travellers! 
It has attractions of every sort, — the grandeur of the 
mountains, the fascination of these irregular shore lines 
(how they do make you wish to explore and discover what 
lies at the other side of those promontories!) the romantic 
history of the region, and then, with all the rest, the won- 
derful feats of engineering that have been accomplished 
hereabouts during the last few years. The St. Grotthard 
railway runs along this shore where we stand now; its 
tracks occupy a shelf eut in the rock below the level of 
this terrace, between us and the water. Farther south, 
towards Fluelen, both the railroad and the highway are 
cut out of the mountain-sides or tunnelled through, and 
the picturesque results are worth a special journey. 

Map No. 3 shows how the lake-shore runs north and 
south between Brunnen and Fluelen. We will go down 
as far as the point marked 14 and get another glimpse of 
the shore at a point half-way down to Fluelen. 

14. Sisikon and the Mighty Uri-Hothstock 

Is it any wonder that people flock to Switzerland from 
more commonplace regions? Leslie Stephen years ago 
called the land of the Swiss Eepublic " the Playground of 
Europe," and the affectionate title has clung to it ever 
since. 

"I asked myself, — is this a dream? 
Will it all vanish into air? 
Is there a land of such supreme 
And perfect beauty, anywhere? " 



SISIKON AND THE URI-ROTHSTOCK 



71 



When we penetrate into the heart of the mountains, as 
we shall, by and by, their solemn vastness and severity fill 
the whole mind; but here it is different. Though we look 
up to those icy wastes of the Uri-Eothstoek, we have this 
cosy village close at hand, looking as cheerful and con- 
tented as if it were sunning itself in the centre of an 
American prairie. 

It is that farther, snow-covered mountain to the ex- 
treme right which claims a height of 9,620 feet. The 
nearer mountain, that rises so steeply from the lake and 
ends in an irregular dome or cap, is over eight thousand 
feet high. It looks as if great landslides might sometime 
have broken away parts of the slope nearest to us; in- 
deed that dark hill exactly opposite us has the air of 
having lost a great fragment sometime ages ago. Did it 
fall into the immense depths of the lake? Such land- 
slides, or earth-avalanches, are common hereabouts. The 
old records tell how once a great mass of rock fell from 
the side of the Frohnalpstock, a mile away on this shore, 
at our right, and how the plunge of the mass into the 
lake sent waves rolling so high that several people were 
drowned here in the village of Sisikon. But that was 
years ago. 

It was something over a hundred years ago (1799) dur- 
ing Napoleon's wars, that a French army passed through 
the village in pursuit of Suwaroff and his Eussian troops. 
Poor Switzerland had a hard time in those days, for, 
though she had no part in the quarrel, she suffered from 
the fact of standing between the combatants. 



72 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



You see that sharp, white line skirting the base of the 
steep slope at our left? That is a part of the famous 
highway known as the Axenstrasse. You can see where 
it enters a tunnel in the mountain-side, then shows itself 
again bordering the slope of the next point beyond. The 
St. Gotthard railway runs along parallel with the car- 
riage road, but lower down, — nearer the lake. The tracks 
run along the shore beyond the village houses and then 
burrow into the mountain-side, where you see the square 
opening below the carriage road. Both railway and high- 
way are exceedingly picturesque from here to Fluelen. 
The roads were blasted out of the sides of the mountain 
and overlook some of the most beautiful parts of the lake. 

It was a short distance beyond that projecting point 
yonder, on this side of the lake, that Tell is said to have 
jumped ashore when Gessler was carrying him to prison. 
A memorial chapel marks the spot, and it is an objective 
point for many a romantic pilgrim. This time we will 
keep to the rock-hewn highway above the shore. 

15.\The Bold Axenstrasse, hewn from the Cliffs, 
360 feet above Lake Lucerne 

It is a dizzy height, as we lean out over the lake, and 
you see the rocks above actually overhang the road ahead. 
Until about forty years ago the only way to traverse this 
region was by painful and dangerous climbing over high 
cliffs and icy slopes, up and down and around all sorts of 
obstacles, multiplying the air-line distance into some- 
thing many times greater, and spending days instead of 
hours in difficult progress on foot, with some patient 



THE BOLD AXENSTRASSE 



73 



mule to help carry burdens. Now the lake shore gives, 
in its eight-mile length, as safe and secure a road-bed as 
the most luxurious traveller could ask for, and gives him 
these magnificent views on his way to or from the south. 
The St. G-otthard railway and this highway are favorite 
routes from Central Europe down into Italy. " Beyond 
the Alps lies Italy " and "All roads lead to Eome " are 
familiar old proverbs; right here they suddenly take on a 
literal application. Italy is beyond those mountains. 
This road leads to Eome. The very clouds that we see 
rolling up from the south may be bringing Mediterranean 
waters up here into Switzerland to be turned into ice and 
snow. Here in this mountain land we are perpetually 
reminded of the great forces of nature and how they work 
to put the world in shape. At the same time there is 
hardly a country in the world where we find more strik- 
ing evidences of the new formative forces dependent on 
the developing energies of men. Eains and snows, grind- 
ing glaciers, tempests and hurricanes, are still kept at 
work creating Switzerland, but men are helping too, build- 
ing these roads, railways, telegraph lines, steamboats. It 
is a wide variation from the task of the first gardener 
when he was given charge over the earth " to dress it and 
to keep it"; but it seems to be a natural outgrowth from 
primitive beginnings after all. The sight of these mag- 
nificent heights has nothing depressing in it, even though 
it does bring home to us a sense of our physical littleness. 
What if our bodies are little? The minds that thought 
out this highway and thought out the construction of that 



74 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

steamboat down there are no little things! It is a place 
to rejoice and not to feel afraid. Indeed, who can help 
but rejoice with this heavenly sunshine streaming over 
the precipices and half hiding — half revealing — the ranks 
on ranks of mountains beyond the lake? 

One more look from this wonderful roadway before we 
leave Lucerne. We will look from that tunnel you see 
ahead of us. 

16. Tunnels of the Axenstrasse overhanging 
Lake Lucerne 

Here we are, burrowed into the side of the mountain, 
with these arched openings to let light and air into the 
rocky tunnel. That massive column separating the two 
arches is, you see, an untouched part of the natural cliff. 
The surrounding rock was blasted and hewn away, leav- 
ing it for a support. Above us is the whole massive 
mountain of rock. 

This is an outlook to delight an artist. The romantic 
suggestiveness of the place would appeal to him, of 
course, — the elevation above the lake, the towering moun- 
tains, the brilliance of the sunshine, the cavernous mys- 
tery of that turn in the tunnel just ahead, the friendly 
simplicity of this farmer's boy with his big basket — these 
easily make up the " story " side of a picture. But, over 
and above all this, many artists feel the positive beauty 
of the scene itself. They and the poets know that 

" Beauty is its own excuse for being." 

The aspiring lines of those mountains are a joy to the 



LIGHT AND DARK IN LANDSCAPE 



75 



eye just as the notes of a bird are a delight to the ear. 
And just see what exquisite running scales of lightness 
and darkness in color are being performed before our 
eyes. There is the deepest dark of the tunnel ahead; it 
is lighter near the first opening; there is just a gleam of 
brilliant sunshine on the edge of the rock where the 
strongest light falls. Then the hillside, seen through 
that first arched opening, is a little darker again; the 
deeply shadowed side of the stone pillar is darker still, — 
then lighter as the sunshine brightens it. Again there is 
a streak of brilliantly sunshiny rock surface at the right 
side of the pillar. Then comes another dark mass of hill- 
side; then another mass that looks lighter because of the 
sunny haze in the air; then that pyramidal mountain 
f ainter and lighter still, — then its snowy peak, — then the 
open sky. It is to our eye almost exactly like what a 
bird's song is to our ear, running from lower notes up to 
higher, down again, — then up, — then down, — then up and 
up and up to the highest note of all. No wonder artists 
delight in outlooks like the one we have here. No won- 
der some of them spend years trying to show the rest of 
us what it means to them! We might study for an 
hour at a time the different musical changes of light and 
dark in this one bit of Switzerland. It is as wonderful 
in its own way as the famous rainbows at Niagara or the 
echoes in a mountain pass. But we can come here again. 
Indeed, this is one of the spots that is sure to draw us 
again to itself. 

Meanwhile the country beyond this lake is calling us. 



BEKNE 



Yon remember our first sight of the Bernese Alps from 
the summit of Pilatus (Stereograph 12). We shall ex- 
plore that region presently; and we mnst see Berne itself, 
for it is one of the most picturesque old towns in all 
Switzerland. If you have not its exact location clearly in 
mind, it will be worth while to turn to the general map 
of Switzerland, Map No. 1, to see its position relative to 
Lake Lucerne. You see it is almost due west. 

Let us get a general idea of the old town first, before 
exploring any of the streets in detail. A particularly 
interesting glimpse of the place can be had from the hilly 
banks of the Aare, in the suburbs at the north of the city 
proper. Map No. 4 shows us the place from which we 
are to look; the range of our view is given by the lines 
connected with the number 17 which we see printed on 
the crest of the hill. Evidently we are to look south- 
southeast over a bit of the eastern end of the town, where 
the river turns an abruptly enclosing curve. 

1 7. The River Aare at Berne, and the distant Alps 

It is only a bit of the town that we see here; the 
greater part of its buildings are farther out at the right 
or behind us, for, as the map promised, we are looking at 

76 



THE CITY OF BERNE 



77 



the very end of the narrow tongue of land that the river 
hems in. Noting the ail-but complete isolation of the 
original town site, we can understand how it came to be 
chosen seven hundred years ago (1191) by the dukes of 
Zaehringen as a stronghold for their party during long 
and turbulent struggles between the Emperor and the 
Pope. The river is deep and swift, and every bit as good 
as a wall. That first bridge, the one with the three low 
arches, was built about 1461. Very likely the romantic 
account of Columbus' eventful voyages was first brought 
into town by somebody riding over those old arches! 
The high bridge beyond is of course more modern. It is 
the pride of the place, for its central span (155 feet broad 
and 100 feet high) is one of the largest stone arches in 
the world. 

Over beyond the left end of the high bridge is one of 
the traditional sights of Berne, the Bear Garden, where 
the animals are kept at public expense. The bear is the 
ancient emblem of the city. Just why it should be, no- 
body seems quite sure, but a bear's figure appeared in the 
coat-of-arms in 1224, and the traditional association has 
been kept up ever since. Napoleon in 1798 took the 
bears to Paris and put them in the J ardin des Plantes as 
trophies; but after his downfall the beasts came back to 
Berne, and their descendants, or at least their distant 
relatives, are here now. Eepresentations of bears figure 
everywhere in heraldic devices and sculptured decorations. 
Everybody buys wood-carven bears to carry away as sou- 
venirs of the place. 



78 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

There are over half a million people in Berne to-day; 
indeed, one-fifth of all the Swiss folk live here. Since 
1848 it has been the seat of the Federal Government, and 
it is a busy manufacturing town with large commercial 
interests. Protestants make a strong majority in both 
city and canton, but, as everywhere in this sensible coun- 
try, people are free to follow their own religious convic- 
tions, whatever those may be. That church down yonder 
(St. Mary Magdalen) was built long before there was any 
division into Catholic and Protestant. 

The mountains that look so dim in the distance are some 
of the same peaks that we saw from the top of Pilatus, 
but the hazy air makes them look actually farther away 
than before. There is still another place, up on these 
hills at the north of the river, where a fine view is to be 
had of the mountains. It is a few streets west of where 
we are now, that is, a little distance to our right. The 
map (Map No. 4) marks it 18. 

18. Heme and her great Mountain Chain ; the 
JBemese Oberland 

Consult the map of Berne and you will see exactly the 
direction in which we are looking now, — about southeast. 
The mountains are just a little clearer. The one at the 
extreme left is the shoulder of the Eiger; we saw that 
from Pilatus. The Monch stands next. That huge bulk 
directly above the little girPs head is the Jungfrau, one of 
the most beautiful of all the Alpine heights. We shall 
appreciate it better when we see it at shorter range from 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN BERNE 



79 



near Interlaken. Seen from here to-day it looks as if it 
might be fifteen or eighteen miles away, but in reality it is 
nearer forty-five miles distant in a straight line, and to 
reach it we should have to cover about seventy-five miles 
by road. On the general map of Switzerland we find our 
present field of vision marked out by two red lines which 
extend from Berne to the Bernese Oberland. 

That conspicuous big building down in the town, be- 
tween us and the mountains, is the seat of the cantonal 
government. The Federal buildings are farther to our 
right (west) at the south side of the town. Both of those 
church spires belong to very old buildings. The cathe- 
dral at the right, with the tall tower (233 feet) has foun- 
dations that belong to the thirteenth century and its 
carved doors and stained glass windows are beautiful in 
the quaint fashion of five hundred years ago. This iron 
bridge nearer us must be one of the newest structures 
about the town. It says Nineteenth Century as plainly 
as ever a bit of fanciful church architecture said Middle 
Ages. 

As a matter of fact, Berne to-day puts emphasis on her 
school-houses rather than on cathedrals. This canton is 
one of the most progressive in all Switzerland, in regard 
to matters connected with public education. The schools 
are free like American schools and every bit as democratic. 
The child of the rich manufacturer and the child of the 
coal-heaver may be rival class-mates and intimate friends. 
Text-books are provided without charge for those who 
cannot afford to buy their own books. They say it is now 



80 SWITZEKLAND THKOUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



difficult to find any native Swiss in a town like Berne who 
cannot read and write; and the standard of acquirement is 
of course steadily rising. Attendance at the universities 
increases year by year. These little folks may all take 
degrees by and by. Switzerland is generously "up to 
date " in providing for girls as well as boys. 

We must see at least one of the old streets down in the 
town. Map No. 4 shows an interesting spot in the heart 
of the old town, where there is a curious bit of medieval- 
ism left in the middle of the street. You see standpoint 
19 marked on the city map, about half-way between the 
two curves of the river? The diverging lines show that 
we shall look west along the Kramgasse, past a large 
theatre building where some smaller square structure pro- 
jects out towards the middle of the street. That square 
structure is what we shall especially care to see. 

19. Principal Street and Old Clock, Berne 

This is the very street that we found on the map, — the 
Kramgasse, looking west. The theatre is on the left and 
the square projection — that is it, the old clock-tower with 
the steeple-pointed roof! That is one of the oldest things 
in this old town, for it was once the western gate in a 
wall built in 1191 by the German dukes to protect their 
station on the narrow peninsula. (You know that was at 
the very time when Richard the Lion-hearted and Philip 
of France were carrying on the Third Crusade and fighting 
Saladin over in Palestine at the end of the Mediterranean 
Sea. How far these streets lead us back into the past!) 



THE STEEETS OF BERNE 



81 



Of course the tower has had various repairs and restora- 
tions, but it stands on the original foundations of seven 
hundred years ago. Much of the present walls belong to 
the fifteenth century, the curious old clock is of the six- 
teenth century; the spire is later; — that went on in the 
eighteenth century. 

The clock is a monument to the patience and skilful 
ingenuity of its maker more than three hundred years ago. 
It has a cleverly devised mechanism which gives enter- 
tainment to passers-by whenever it marks an hour, — the 
idea of a " cuckoo " clock elaborated into a complicated 
ceremonial. The puppet-show takes place up there above 
and a little to the right of the arched gateway. At three 
minutes before the hour a wooden cock flaps his wings. A 
minute later a procession of bears moves around the seated 
figure of an old man. The cock flaps his wings again. 
Another figure (a jester) strikes the hour with a hammer, 
while the bearded man turns an hour-glass. Then the 
cock flaps his wings a third time in conclusion. 

The street seems to have no sidewalk? The fact is 
those arched openings that you see at your left lead into a 
rather dark side passage extending along the street under 
the front of each successive building. This makes the 
shops in behind the covered ways or " arcades " rather ill- 
lighted, but, now that electricity has come, that will not 
matter so much. They carried this fashion of enclosed 
side-walks through several of the Berne streets. It seems 
to have been a favorite idea in its day. 

" Working like a dog " means something here in Berne. 



82 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



Milk-carts like this one are very commonly drawn by dogs 
trained to the work. Perhaps this sturdy fellow wants a 
drink. He seems to be looking earnestly toward the foun- 
tain. There is no reason why anybody, man or beast, 
should go thirsty here for there is a fine water-supply and 
public fountains are found in all parts of the city. This 
fountain, you see, has the traditional bear up there on the 
summit of the supporting column. 

The people we see are mostly attending to their own 
affairs in a sensible, matter-of-fact way. The Bernese are 
an industrious, thrifty folk, who live comfortably on small 
incomes and lay aside money for their old age. Tramps 
and paupers of the vicious sort are comparatively un- 
known, though of course respectable families do occa- 
sionally find black sheep in their flocks. Then there is an 
old, very old, aristocracy here. We Americans who count 
with innocent pride our emigrant ancestors of 1620 and 
our soldier ancestors of 1776, have to hide our diminished 
heads before the records of the lineage of some of the 
Berne people! In 1891 they held a festival here to cele- 
brate the seven hundredth anniversary of the founding of 
the city, and some of the people who took part in the his- 
torical pageant were direct descendants of the mediaeval 
men and women whom they represented. Indeed some of 
the oldest families in all Europe are found represented 
to-day by intelligent, gentle-mannered, not very rich Swiss 
citizens. 

The region around Berne is full of attractive villages 
where picturesque wooden chalets have not yet been re- 



VILLAGE ARCHITECTUKE 



83 



placed by more commonplace types borrowed from out- 
side. The older fashions of building are, however, grad- 
ually passing away; that is an inevitable consequence of 
the spread of railroads and telegraphs and the influx of 
tourists from all quarters. Characteristic costumes are 
disappearing too, and being replaced by imitations of 
Parisian whims. That truly is a pity, but it cannot be 
helped. It is the way of the world. 

20. At the Village Fountain 

Two of these village girls have the good sense to keep 
to the tradition of their mothers and grandmothers, wear- 
ing the full white chemisettes and dark bodices that are 
so invariably becoming and attractive. Almost any 
woman alive would look well in a dress like that, just as 
any woman alive looks well in a little white cap! There 
must be some subtle suitability about the dress which 
makes it bring out otherwise undiscovered charms. 

This is a thoroughly typical bit of Switzerland that we 
see before us. This rough pavement under our feet is not 
the easiest of footing but it is " like a picture," so we in- 
stinctively think. So are the houses too, like houses in 
an artist's sketch-book. Just see the way this near-by 
roof overhangs. We could sit on that bench outside the 
shop door and yet be fairly under cover in a light rain. It 
would be an interesting place to sit, too, if we wished to 
see the life of the village, for all sorts and conditions of 
people come here to the fountain to draw water and pass 
the time o y day with the neighbors. 



84 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE. 



Do you notice how plainly the structure of these old 
wooden houses shows from the outside? We are so used 
to having our own wooden beams all covered up with 
clapboards or concealed by shingles, and so accustomed to 
having our steel girders hidden behind a facing of brick 
or stone or pressed terra-cotta, that the simple frankness 
and honesty of this more primitive style of building 
strike us with surprise. But just see how natural it is. 
Look at that big house at the opposite side of the square. 
The beams that form the skeleton frame-work show for 
just what they are. The seeming supports are real sup- 
ports. There is not a scrap of so-called "decoration" 
added to the frankly necessary parts, and yet the effect 
of the whole is distinctly beautiful because all the parts 
are in such right relations to each other. Are not the 
dark and light spaces on that house-front a real pleasure 
to the eye, by virtue of their harmonious proportions? 
And yet the house looks as if it simply grew so, — not as 
if an architect had squandered midnight oil trying to 
think up some combination of windows and gables that 
had never been seen before. The old-time builders seem 
to have had instinctive good taste about such things. It 
is true, they had no ideas about ventilation or drainage or 
things of that sort, and those are rather important. But 
if we could have the old sense of beauty combined with 
the modern grasp of practical problems, what a combina- 
tion that would make! 

The statue guarding this fountain represents one of the 
many heroes of Swiss history that are dear to this patriotic 



BERNESE COSTUMES 



85 



people. The list of them is a long one, for the Swiss wars 
have been many and the warriors valiant. There are 
stories on stories about their romantic lives. Do you 
remember the German ballad about the Lord of Toggen- 
burg who went away to fight in the Holy Land when his 
lady-love refused him? He stayed away till he could stay 
no longer, then came home just a day too late. The 
maiden had entered a convent. Then, you remember, he 
forsook the castle of his fathers and became a hermit, liv- 
ing in a little hut within sight of the convent walls, where 
once a day he could catch a glimpse of the loved one's face 
at her window. We have usually thought of the tale only 
as we think of fairy stories, but it probably did have some 
foundation. The lords of Toggenburg were a famous 
family over near Zurich, and the chronicles of their time 
are full of happenings every bit as romantic as that. 



21. A Swiss Home and its~Home- Maker. 

Eomance is still alive in the country of the Toggen- 
burgs. It is not likely to die as long as sweet-faced girls 
like this keep growing up in the towns and villages. 
There seems to be something peculiarly abiding in the 
charm by which nice girls in Switzerland hold their boyish 
admirers, for it is well known that the many, many Swiss 
who go to France and Germany, Italy and England, to 
seek their fortunes, almost without exception come home 
to Switzerland to find wives. 

We can see one of the beautiful country costumes in 



86 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



closer detail now. The brooches and festooned chains on 
the black velvet bodice give the traditional finishing touch 
of elegance, but not everybody can afford them. This 
pretty young matron is able to translate the conventional 
idea of the dress into individual daintiness and grace. 
Who says a long apron is not a beautiful bit of costume? 
She knows better. So do we, now that we have seen her 
wear it. i 

See that interesting old chalet of the next-door neigh- 
bor. Perhaps you do not usually stack the winter's wood 
under your front windows, but it is not a bad plan, when 
you come to think of it. How gay the balconies are, with 
their blossoming flower-pots, and how cosy that hooded 
gable looks, projecting out over all the rest. It must make 
the attic rooms rather dark? Perhaps so; but it does 
make the street so pleasant! Not being responsible for 
hygienic conditions, we can enjoy picturesque effects at 
our leisure. 



THE BERNESE ALPS 



But we are eager to be moving on towards the Bernese 
Alps. We will strike the river Aare again, near Berne, 
and follow it up about twenty miles to the twin lakes of 
Thun and Brienz. The general map (Map No. 1) shows 
Thun at the end of the lake of the same name, some 
twenty miles southeast of Berne, and marks our next 
standpoint. The rectangle in red, which has one corner 
at this town of Thun, indicates the territory, in the very 
heart of Switzerland, known as the Bernese Oberland or 
Bernese Alps, which is shown on a larger scale on Map 
No. 5. This special map does not quite take in the town 
of Thun, but on opening it we find it shows, by lines 
beginning in the upper left-hand margin and marked 22 
at their extremities, a part of what is included in our next 
outlook. We shall climb the steep stairs of an old castle 
standing on a hill above the lake and look southeast down 
over the town and across to the mountains. 

22. Ancient Thun and its Lake, from the Castle 

There is the famous Jungfrau now! You see it over 
the double range of hills at the extreme left. 

The houses down in the town seem to be crowding 
together as closely as possible at the foot of this hill. You 
see they still keep up the tradition of seven hundred years 

87 



88 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



ago when houses naturally crept as close as they could to 
the sheltering stronghold of the ruling and protecting 
lord, like timid children clinging to their mother's skirts. 
There are some quaint, old timbered houses down there 
now, but they can hardly be as old as the stone castle. 
The big building that you see beyond the church on the 
bank of the Aare is a hotel, — not a particularly beautiful 
object in itself, but affording beautiful outlooks to hun- 
dreds of travellers every summer. The travellers are 
usually in a hurry, mere birds of passage who alight for a 
day and then fly on; but there are others, with longer 
leisure, who spend whole seasons in villas like those you 
see scattered among the trees along the river banks. 

The Aare is not merely an outlet for the lakes of Brienz 
and Thun, but a feeder as well. In fact, it flows through 
both lakes. They are strung upon it like beads on a rib- 
bon. " Beads " make a rather good simile too, for the 
lakes are by no means the flat sheets of water they seem 
to be. Lake Thun, over yonder, the other side of that 
point, is said to be, in places, fully a thousand feet deep! 
Of course we all know that here among the mountains any 
water-filled hollow is likely to be much deeper than in a 
region of mere hills; but the possible depth of a thousand 
feet does not naturally occur to the imagination. 

Marvelous tales were told in old times about a miracle- 
working hermit who came over here at about the same 
time as St. Gall — perhaps a little earlier — and brought to 
the scattered people the doctrines of Christ. But here, 
just as about Lucerne, the historic facts, whatever they 



LOOKING FROM THE CASTLE OF THUN 



89 



may have been, are all mixed up with tales of fire-spitting 
dragons and supernatural combats. Then there is an- 
other strange story about the lake of Thun. An old 
seventh-century chronicle tells how in the year 598 the 
lake waters grew so hot as to boil in their bed and cook 
the fish that had been peacefully swimming in their 
depths. Maybe this vivid touch of detail was a bit of 
" journalistic " exaggeration, but it seems to be quite true 
that volcanic action has taken place at some early period 
in the rock f oundations along the shores. 

The map of the Bernese Oberland, Map No. 5, shows 
just how the Aare flows from Lake Brienz through Lake 
Thun. Geologists say the two lakes were formerly one, 
but that the stream now called the " Lutschine/^ tearing 
down northward from Lauterbrunnen and the Grindelwald 
valley, carried so much debris with it as to start a bar 
opposite its outlet, midway of the length of the lake. The 
accumulations grew and grew until in time they have be- 
come so far spread as practically to divide the long lake 
into two sections, connected by a narrow stream. The 
newly made land does not betray its comparative youth, 
except to the geologists inquiring eye. It is the site of 
one of the most popular and populous summer resorts in 
all Switzerland, the town of Interlaken. 

We can go around from here to Interlaken by boat, or, 
if we prefer, by rail along the south shore of Lake Thun. 
To Interlaken in some way we must surely go, for there 
we have a magnificent near view of the Jungfrau. 

Look once more at Map No. 5 and find the standpoint 



90 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



of Stereograph 23 between the two lakes. The guide- 
lines show that we are to stand on the north side of the 
Aare and look a little east of south to the Jungfrau, 
which the scale of miles declares to be about twelve miles 
distant. 

23. Interlaken and the Jungfrau 

Now we are nearing the heart of the mountains. At 
this point the Maiden Mountain stands so tall, so white 
and so severe that we can readily understand how people 
used to think her heights were destined to be forever un- 
touched by the foot of man! That was before the days of 
Alpine Clubs. Now many a traveller has climbed up to 
that highest peak and come down again to tell his tale of 
toil and adventure. Mountain climbers assure us, less 
venturesome travellers, that a peak like this means vastly 
more to them than it means to us. What looks to us, from 
here, like a bit of a boulder may really be an ice-coated 
cliff sixty feet high where every step has to be prepared 
with an axe. What looks like an unimportant little streak 
of shadow may be the twenty-feet-wide and two-hundred- 
feet-deep opening of an ice-chasm, necessitating a long 
detour and hours of painful crawling over perilous slopes. 
Leslie Stephen, the famous English Alpinist, says it is 
only when one has had personal experience in mountain 
climbing, and so becomes able to translate such tiny marks 
on a mountain's flanks into their tremendous and terrible 
significance, that one can really begin to appreciate moun- 
tain grandeur! 



THE JUNGFRAU FROM INTERLAKEN 



91 



The waters of the Aare that are rushing past us toward 
the right (southwest) eome partly from the melting snows 
of the Jungfrau yonder. The accumulated masses become 
compacted into glaciers by means of the enormous press- 
ure of their own weight, and are gradually pushed farther 
and farther down the mountain slopes, slowly melting in 
the lower valleys and feeding the mountain streams. Far- 
ther out to our left a stream of this sort comes down from 
the Lauterbrunnen valley which lies behind this wooded 
hill between the two dark ranges of mountains. For cen- 
turies and ages the stream has come tearing down through 
that valley, pouring into this river Aare not only the 
snows of the Jungfrau and of the Jungfrau' s neighbors, 
but also millions of tons of gravel and such like stuff. In 
a region like this there is hardly a day without avalanches 
great or small, and avalanches mean perpetually breaking 
off fragments of ledges, to be pulverized by farther falling 
or by being dragged along under the enormous weight of 
a slow-moving glacier. Imagine, if you please, what 
geologists say is the fact, that the whole site of that town 
yonder, and indeed the whole area of the plain on which 
it stands (some two by four miles), was once a part of the 
lakes of Brienz and Thun. The mountain stream coming 
down through the valley began by depositing its contribu- 
tions of gravel on the lake bottom, hundreds of feet below 
the surface. The deposits accumulated and accumulated 
till after some enormous length of time they rose almost 
to the level of the lake waters and made a shallow place in 
the lake; — then a sand-bar; — then a gradually increasing 



92 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

area of "made land." Interlaken stands altogether on 
land thus gradually manufactured out of the spoils of that 
mountain stream. 

Switzerland is still in process of creation. Here " the 
Moving Finger writes " to-day, under our very eyes! 

We must explore the valleys between here and the 
Jungfrau. First though, before we pass through that 
noble gateway to visit the famous places about the Jung- 
frau and her attendant peaks in the Bernese Oberland, it 
will be wise for us to take a few minutes to glance over 
our map of this particular section of the Alps before us. 
Spread out Map No. 5 and trace first the river Aare near 
the top of the map in its course from the east through 
the Brienz and Thun lakes toward the west. 

Note now the Ehone valley, in the lower right-hand 
section of the map, extending from the northeast to the 
southwest. Between this section of the valley of the 
Ehone and the valley of the Aare, rise the highest of 
the Bernese Alps. This range extends in a general direc- 
tion from northeast to southwest. The white portions of 
the map, which at first might be taken for low-lying lakes 
and rivers, really show the enormous snow-fields and the 
glaciers which forever cover these great mountain masses. 
The slope toward the Ehone valley is fairly regular and 
short; no streams of consequence flow south into the 
Ehone. Toward the river Aare, on the other hand, the 
altitude diminishes more gradually, so much more exten- 
sive valleys and larger streams are found on that slope. 
The two more important valleys you notice are the Lauter- 



THE BERNESE ALPS 



93 



brunnen, extending north toward Interlaken, and the 
Grindelwald, running nearly east and west until it joins 
the Lauterbrunnen on its way to Interlaken. It is these 
two valleys and the mountains near them that we are now 
to explore. Note first the chief mountains on that side 
of the range. The Jungfrau is nearly in the centre; in 
almost a straight line toward the northeast are the Monch 
and the Eiger; then more directly east, over a great ice 
river, the lower Grindelwald Glacier, are the Smaller and 
Greater Schreckhorn and the Lauteraarhorn, and further 
toward the northeast is the Matterhorn. Southeast of the 
Jungf rau are the Gletscherhorn, Breithorn and Tschingel- 
horn. The great summits on the southeastern side of the 
Oberland, nearer the Rhone, the Aletschhorn, Finsteraar- 
horn and Oberaarhorn, we shall see sometime later when 
we return from the Engadine. 

Eeturning to our standpoint by the river Aare at Inter- 
laken, we can understand better how the Lauterbrunnen 
Valley extends off to the south, between the Jungfrau and 
that hazy elevation on our right, and that the Grindelwald 
Valley lies behind the mountain on our left, to the east of 
the Jungfrau. 

Now we will take one of the little cog-wheel railway 
trains and let it carry us up that mountain at the left. 
From a place called the Schynige Platte, over on the 
farther (southeast) side of that mountain, we can look 
over the Grindelwald Valley and secure fine views of some 
of the peaks that stand east of the Jungfrau. Then we 
shall descend to the Lauterbrunnen Valley. 



94 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



The snow-covered mountain of which we now get just a 
glimpse at the left of the Jungfrau is the Monch. We 
shall not take that in from the Schynige Platte, but shall 
look still farther to the left (east). See how the proposed 
standpoint (24) and our field of vision from it are marked 
on Map No. 5. 

2&. Grindelwald Valley, the Wetterhorn and SchrecJc- 
horn from Schynige JPlatte 

We are looking nearly east. Interlaken is behind us 
now; the Jungfrau is away at our right. 

We saw these same summits from Pilatus (Stereograph 
12), but they were only notches in a mountain wall. Now 
we begin to feel their individuality. How near they seem! 
But it is, in fact, more than ten miles across the Grindel- 
wald Valley at our feet, to the Schreckhorn, or Terror 
Peak, with the ridge of pinnacles along its crest, and the 
Wetterhorn at the left, is still farther away. It is almost 
impossible to judge distances correctly in this clear moun- 
tain air. Only after one has had long experience can he 
learn to take the quality of the atmosphere properly into 
account. 

They say the silence of those great heights is something 
awesome. Here where we stand, on this upland pasture, 
we may have bird companions, and hear the voices of 
streams. But up on one of those peaks there is never the 
sound of a bird's note, never the tinkle of a brook, never 
anything but the wind and the crash of sudden avalanches 
of rocks and ice. Up there on the Wetterhorn one might 



THE WETTERHORN AND SCHRECKHORN 95 



stand where the mountain-side below him slopes steeply 
for a few rods, then curves inward, leaving an unob- 
structed view down to the valley nine thousand feet below, 
— a place where one needs a clear head and a steady foot! 

A good deal of the snow from those two summits evi- 
dently settles into the high valley between the two crests, 
where we see the broad expanse of white. That is a part 
of the Upper Grindelwald Glacier. Its accumulated 
masses of snow become compacted into ice and gradually 
push down into the valley far below> where they feed the 
Black Lutschine, one of the many little rivers of this 
region. The stream comes down through this Grindel- 
wald Valley just in front of us, and flows to the west 
(right), joining the White Lutschine and turning towards 
Interlaken, away behind us. It was this Grindelwald 
Glacier and the busy Black Lutschine that helped build 
up the sand-bar on which Interlaken stands (Stereograph 
23). 

It would be a fine adventure to climb one of these mag- 
nificent peaks, but every climber takes the gravest risks. 
Not long ago a party of Englishmen were climbing the 
Schreckhorn when a rock avalanche cut the rope that tied 
them together, severing it three inches from one man's 
belt, — as close a call as one would ever care to experience. 
The Peak of Terrors is well named. 

If we should follow the stream that drains this Grindel- 
wald Valley down to where it joins the White Lutschine 
we should, as we know, reach the Lauterbrunnen Valley. 
This appears on Map No. 5 just southwest of our present 



96 SWITZEELAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

point of outlook. Trace the way south, up the valley six 
miles or so, and you find another location marked 25. The 
red lines on the map are curiously uneven. The line at 
the right ends abruptly at a very short distance, showing 
that our vision is quickly obstructed on that side; the line 
at the left is much longer, promising a view of consider- 
able reach. 

25. Staubbach Waterfall in the Lauterbrunnen 
Valley * 

This is the " sky-born waterfall " of Wordsworth's 
verse, — the waterfall that everybody tries to describe. 
Goethe succeeded better than the rest: 

" In clouds of spray 
Like silver dust. 
It veils the rock 
In rainbow hues, 
And dancing down 
With music soft 
Is lost in air." 

Words could not come much nearer. 

The enormous height of those cliffs becomes more and 
more impressive as we look up toward their far-away sum- 
mits. How very far away they are! The tree-tops on those 
heights look like soft hair on the body of some gigantic, 
furry monster. No wonder. They are a thousand feet 

* Do observe how exactly the map indicated the range of our 
view here. At the right the view is cut off by those cliffs. At the 
left we can look six or seven miles to the Breitlauenen Glacier at 
the head of the valley. 



THE STAUBBACH FALL 



97 



above our heads. A large part of the way from here down 
to Interlaken (behind ns) the valley is shut in by such 
frowning walls, — sometimes by walls still higher than 
these. It makes the sunrises very late and the sunsets 
very early. In midwinter the sun is sometimes invisible 
save for a few hours about noon; still there are people who 
live here all the year round. You see they have tele- 
graphic communication with the rest of the world, — the 
telegraph is omnipresent, — but it must be a lonely place 
here in the dead of winter, when the fall is only a ragged 
icicle against the cliff, and the snows drift high and the 
sun can give only one glance down the valley each day. 

But look once more at the ribbon of mist and spray as 
it hangs now from the top of the cliff. Its volume is 
nothing in comparison to that of the Ehine falls at S chaff - 
hausen (Stereograph 1). In this case it is not quantity 
but quality that charms. We can almost see the filmy 
veil sway in the breeze, while we watch it. 

As we stand here, looking practically south, the Jung- 
frau rises magnificently beyond the range of our vision to 
the left. In fact that nearer dark cliff to our extreme 
left is the lower portion of the Schwarz-Monch which 
flanks the Jungfrau on this side. In the distance we look 
up to the range of summits that run from the Jungfrau 
toward the southwest. 

There is a village away up beyond those cliffs, on our 
right, a village which we must see. We shall have to go 
back a little way towards Interlaken; then we can take 
a train up a steep little mountain railway and climb still 



98 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

farther on these heights at our right, towards Murren. 
But on the way we ought to look across this hollow in 
which we now stand and get one good view of certain 
mountain giants that tower even now over the other (east) 
side of this narrow valley. Consult the map once more 
and on the heights southwest of standpoint 25 our next 
objective point is found (26). We shall be looking due 
east across the Lauterbrunnen Valley, over the territory 
between those two lines. 

26. Cloud-hidden Heights and appalling Depths, — the 
Monch, Eiger and Lauterbrunnen Valley 

With heights like these on either side is it any wonder 
that the winter sun shines very little on the valley folk? 

We are facing now in a direction at right angles to that 
of our view of the Staubbach. The waterfall is making 
its plunge over the cliff a short distance to our left, down 
the valley. This height where we stand with the little 
girls for company is the Schwarzbirg, nine thousand feet 
above the sea-level. It is a dizzy height, reckoning even 
from the valley down there among the shadows of the 
mountains; and yet those snowy heights yonder are head 
and shoulders above this Schwarzbirg. Their summits 
are in fact more than four thousand feet higher than this. 
It is the Monch (" Monk ") that stands just opposite us, 
four or five miles away. The Eiger (" Ogre ") is so 
wrapped in clouds that we can see plainly only the sun- 
lighted peak. The hollow between the two holds, as we 
might expect, another glacier, whose ice-masses are of 



THE MONCH AND THE EIGER 



99 



enormous depth and weight. It is pushing slowly down, 
grinding off the mountain-sides as it moves, and everlast- 
ingly renewed above by the ceaseless accumulations of 
snow. That broad white mantle that lies around the 
knees of the Monch is another glacier, — the G-uggi. 
Hardy climbers cross both these ice-fields on their routes 
to and from the summits; but crossing is no such simple 
matter as it looks to be from here. Those innocent-ap- 
pearing white fields, when seen in close acquaintance, 
develop into ragged cliffs of ice that stand up perpendic- 
ular, and ghastly precipices of ice, the entrance gates to 
ice-chasms hundreds of feet deep. Such things might 
be expected of an Ogre mountain, but a Monk? The 
" Monk " is just as bad; indeed the " Maiden " or Jung- 
frau has glaciers of her own, so full of terrors for the un- 
initiated that they kept her summit for many a century 
unknown by mortal traveller. We will see some glacier- 
climbing for ourselves by and by. 

Just see how the noon shadow of the Schwarz-Monch 
(out of sight at the right) lies over the nearer portion of 
the low valley. It gives one a tremendously strong sense 
of the great elemental forces of the world, — this outlook 
above the clouds, where the mountains reach up and out so 
far into the endless, sun-lighted sky. Sun and wind, ice 
and snow: — these the Lord uses to shape this earth, and 
these we can see still busy at their ordained affairs. 

How much do you suppose these little country maids 
take in the sublimity of a scene like this? Perhaps very 
little. It is largely a question of temperament, partly a 



LofC. 



100 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

question of education. But just imagine one of these 
children, familiar with such sights as this, taken away to a 
commonplace, level town full of dull houses and noisy 
factories and crowded shops. The little heroine of 
Heidi * had that experience, and she all-but died of sheer 
homesickness. Far away in Frankfort she could see in 
imagination just the way the sunlight was falling on a 
mountain pasture like this, and her heart was ready to 
break with longing for the sight of it. 

These little folks certainly look sturdy and contented 
as they are. They go to public school a certain number of 
weeks each year. They are brought up to industry. They 
knit and sew; they sweep the house and tend the babies; 
they climb these slopes for Alpine strawberries; they 
watch the pastured goats to keep them from straying 
away into dangerous places; there are numberless tasks to 
fill their days and keep them from being lonely. See how 
that older girl carries the heavy bucket fastened to her 
back. It is less graceful than the Italian fashion of bur- 
den-bearing on the head, but it has its advantages in a 
place where rough scrambling becomes necessary. 

The pastures in a region like this are usually owned in 
common by a village; the various families all have certain 
recognized pasture privileges, — so many cows, so many 
goats. As the summer months go by the animals are 
driven from one bit of pasture to another, making the 
most possible out of each place in turn. It is seldom that 



* By J ohanna Spyri of Zurich. 



CHILD LIFE IN THE COUNTRY 



101 



many blades of grass are wasted, thanks to the appetite of 
the beasts themselves and the thrifty oversight of their 
care-takers. Where the hay-making is going on the same 
thrift is exercised. Little fields away up here on the cliffs 
are mowed two, and even three, times in a season, every 
handful of green stuff carefully included, mountain 
flowers and all. The crop is none too much to last 
through the long winter. 

You remember, of course, that the word " alp " really 
means a pasture, not necessarily a lofty peak. 

Before leaving this place we should notice the lower 
wooded slope down on our left. Between those two girls 
we can see an opening in the woods, and very faintly the 
outline of some building on the lower side of the opening. 
That elevation is known as the Wengern Alp and offers 
some of the finest view points in this region. A railroad 
leads from the Lauterbrunnen Valley over the Wengern 
Alp as the map shows, and later we shall make our way 
to those elevations by that route. 

Now we shall proceed a mile or two south, still keeping 
to this high ridge west of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, until 
we come to the village of Murren. It has a higher alti- 
tude than any of the other Swiss mountain hamlets. See 
the point marked 27 on the map of the Bernese Alps, Map 
No. 5, and the lines extending toward the right. 



102 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



27. Murren, the Loftiest of Switzerland's Samlets 
and the Mbnch and Eiger 

Again we are looking toward the east, but a shoulder of 
the Schwarz-Monch is now between us and the Monch, so 
that we can no longer see much of the long slopes above 
the G-uggi Glacier. The Eiger Glacier is, on the contrary, 
plainer than it was before (Stereograph 26) and the Eiger 
itself has cast aside its cloud-wrappings. That is 
the Eiger directly before us. That dark hollow just 
beyond the church spire is where the Lauterbrunnen 
Valley lies away down between the heights. It was the 
lower slope of that Schwarz-Monch to our right here that 
we saw on our left when we were in the valley (Stereo- 
graph 25). 

Only when we have been here among the mountains for 
some time can we readily take in the idea of their height. 
But see how these cliffs and peaks tower above the little 
houses, — not so very little either; it is by contrast with 
the mountains that they look so like toys. You see almost 
all the roofs are of wood, weighted with stones. It seems 
a bit strange that construction in stone should be so rare 
in this region. 

Murren is a mere handful of houses, but in summer the 
railway brings crowds of tourists to its hotels. Stanley, 
the African explorer, came here to rest his sight on the 
snow-covered mountains after his last journey through 
Africa. What a contrast! These sharply isolated village 
locations, separated by peaks and glaciers and roaring 



THE VILLAGE OF MUREEK 



103 



rivers, naturally necessitate small, separate communities; 
and the simple out-of-door life, the sharing of common 
perils, and the giving and taking of advice and help seem 
to lead naturally toward democracy. As the family idea 
develops into the " commune " idea, so the commune 
seems to lead to the idea of the canton, and the canton to 
the idea of the confederation. It is all very natural and 
logical — to a Swiss or an American mind! 

A clever writer on Switzerland * once shrewdly ob- 
served: " Some people think that universal suffrage makes 
Switzerland free; but universal up and down hill has more 
to do with it." 

And how they do have to work here in Switzerland to 
get a bare living out of the little farms in regions like this! 
The summers are short. Rye, wheat, barley and potatoes 
are about all that can be coaxed to grow, besides the gTass 
needed for goats and cows. This boy, for instance, works 
all summer, going to school during the months when he 
is not imperatively needed for service in the field or the 
pasture. If he has much ambition he has plans for one 
of two careers. He looks forward either to some service 
in connection with the innumerable summer hotels of his 
native land, or else to the work of a professional guide. 
There is money in the hotel business. A bright boy who 
picks up all three of the languages spoken in Switzerland 
(French, German and Italian) with the addition of Eng- 
lish, can work his way up to a good income as a courier. 



* Rev. H. Jones in The Regular Swiss Round. 



104 SWITZEELAND THEOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 

If he goes to Paris and learns to be an expert chef, he can 
before many years make money enough to come home 
here, marry some schoolmate and settle down to a middle 
age of comfortable prosperity. Over in the Engadine a 
great number of the well-to-do Swiss made their fortunes 
in some such way. Or, if the calling and reward of a cook 
do not satisfy him, he can have adventure, glory, and at 
least a fair living, as a professional guide among the peaks 
frequented by mountain-climbers. That choice means a 
hard apprenticeship and work full of exciting peril. It 
depends both on his physique and on his temperament 
whether our boy would take to the work of a guide and do 
well in it. 

Away off to our right, and partly behind us as we stand 
here, is a magnificent range of heights which we must not 
miss. One of the best points of view for the Breithorn 
and the Tschingelhorn is, as we have said, the Wengern 
Alp, over at the other side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley. 
Our next station will be over on one of those hills straight 
ahead of us, at a place a little farther to the left (north) 
than we can now see. When there we shall turn and 
look back, past this village of Murren and far beyond, 
seeing what is now far off at our right. Our position and 
field of vision are given by the lines connected with the 
number 28 on the map. 



THE BBEITHOKN AND TSCHINGELHOKN. 105 



28. The Breithom and Tschingelhorn, Upper Lauter- 
brunnen Valley 

We are looking southwest. It is the Schwarz-Monch 
that stands so dark and square here at our left; next to 
the Sehwarz-Mdnch, some distance beyond, stands the 
Grosshorn, then the Breithom, then the Tschingelhom, 
then the Gspaltenhorn. Over beyond that X of the 
mountain slopes there is another famous ice-field, the 
Breithorn Glacier. It is upon those mountain slopes 
that the stream called the White Lutschine has its source, 
running down through the Lauterbrunnen Valley, be- 
tween those fir trees and the stone cliffs that we see over 
and through the trees. It goes rushing along toward the 
north (i.e., off to our right and behind us), joins the Dark 
Lutschine from the Grindelwald Valley (Stereograph 24) 
and then hurries on to the Aare, where its accumulated 
deliveries of mountain gravel have built up the site of 
Interlaken (Stereograph 23). 

Do you see those houses over yonder to the right, on 
the plateau above the cliffs? That is Murren, the village 
we saw but a little while ago (Stereograph 27). Those 
cliffs are a part of the same formation as the cliffs over 
which the Staubbach made its leap of a thousand feet 
(Stereograph 25) a little farther down the valley to the 
north (right). 

The government is taking great pains to preserve for- 
ests of fir-trees like these, in places where they can act 
as a check on avalanches. Years ago, before forestry had 



106 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

its present scientific basis, trees were cut recklessly with- 
out any consideration of the service they might do by 
standing on their own roots. Many and many a horrible 
avalanche of snow or rocks carried destruction to life 
and property just because the natural defence of a village 
had been taken away to use for firewood. Now the fell- 
ing of trees is under the strict control of well-trained 
engineers; young trees are even being planted in places 
where their roots are to hold the soil together and their 
close-massed trunks and branches are to hold back the 
soft, sliding banks of snow in springtime. 

As we stand here the Eiger, the Moneh and the Jung- 
frau are all off at our left, toward the east. This dark 
cliff of the Schwarz-Monch is practically a shoulder of 
the Jungfrau range. We will change our standpoint now 
to the Little Scheidegg, just a bit farther to the north- 
east (the apex of the lines marked 29 on the map), and 
again look south. 

29. Jungfrau from the Summit of Scheidegg 

It is between four and five miles in a straight line from 
here to that summit; many times as far if we were 
to make the ascent, for the necessary detours are numer- 
ous and slow. At the hotels about here they amuse them- 
selves over new visitors' false estimates of the time needed 
for mountain excursions. The guides and the old climb- 
ers know better. 

This enormous mass of ice and snow at the left is the 
Guggi G-lacier. When we first saw it from the Schwarz- 



ACCIDENTS ON THE JUNGFKAU 



107 



birg (Stereograph 26) we were looking too far eastward 
to see the Jungfrau. The Monch is, of course, now at 
our left, beyond the glacier. That sharp peak part way 
up this (northern) side of the Jungfrau is the one they 
call the Schneehorn. Even that point is over eleven thou- 
sand feet above the sea-level. The white peak to the 
right is the Silberhorn. 

The Jungfrau summit is almost fourteen thousand feet 
high (13,670). Ascents are oftenest made from the south 
or southwest side — that is, on the side opposite us and to 
the right. The approved plan is to sleep at night in a 
mountain hut part way up the first slope; to rouse at one 
o'clock in the morning, eat a sleepy, chilly breakfast and 
begin climbing by the light of the stars. By and by the 
sun rises, and the glory of it pays the climbers for turning 
out so early. They climb and scramble and crawl and 
climb. They cut steps in ice-ridges and move one foot 
slowly after another as the footholds are made. The last 
pull of seven or eight hundred feet is all but perpendicu- 
lar, so the climbers report. A man's breast almost 
touches the mass of ice and snow while he mounts by slow 
advances. Then, at last, he reaches a narrow ridge up 
there on that crest, and then he has a view, — such a view! 
They say that in comparison with the vastness of the 
mountain masses towns like Interlaken look like tiny 
heaps of playthings. 

Old Alpinists say now that the Jungfrau is not an ex- 
ceptionally dangerous ascent; but that means for one who 
is familiar with mountain climbing, who has experienced 



108 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



guides, and who makes his ascent in good weather when 
the condition of the snow is favorable. If any of these 
conditions are not fulfilled, the undertaking is as full of 
danger as can well be imagined. Only five years ago 
(1887) a party of six Swiss students were all lost over on 
the farther (south) side. Trusting too much to their own 
knowledge of the way, they went up from Lauterbrunnen 
without any guides at all. They spent the night in a 
mountain hut on the Roth-thai, — (a ridge over beyond 
those white peaks that we see here at the right) and left 
a card in the hut telling what they were about to do. 
About two o'clock the next afternoon watchers with tele- 
scopes saw them near the summit; then a strong west wind 
came up and clouds gathered about the peak hiding every- 
thing from view. 

They never were seen again alive. Searching parties 
went up and looked for them in vain. Then, a week later, 
it was discovered that they had sought shelter from the 
wind in a dangerous spot over on the farther side, above 
the Aletseh Glacier, and there they perished. One of the 
party fell several hundred feet, dying on the glacier below. 

These Alpine passes are haunted by such stories. They 
make the flesh creep; and yet no man with the real pas- 
sion for mountaineering is ever discouraged by the record 
of other men's disasters, and there are those who take to 
mountain heights as a born sailor takes to the open sea! 

The map shows that the Grindelwald Valley is behind 
us now. There is a fine view to be had from another spot 
up here on the Scheidegg, where we can look away to the 



GRINDELWALD VALLEY FROM UCHEIDEGG 109 



northeast towards Lucerne. We will turn about and go 
a few rods farther back near a little mountain sheepfold, 
and see certain old acquaintances in a new light. See 
number 30 and its lines on the map. 

30. Grindelwald Valley and the Wetterhom from the 
Summit of Scheidegg 

That tallest mountain, the one with the three peaks, 
is the Wetterhorn, which we saw before from the Schy- 
nige Platte (Stereograph 24). The white streak at its 
base, — between it and the dark base of the Schreck- 
horn, — is a part of the Upper Grindelwald Glacier. We 
cannot quite see the peak of the Schreckhorn this time. 
The steep, dark slope, nearest us here at the right, belongs 
to the Eiger. That is only three miles away. But we 
can see a long distance to the northeast, in fact, over 
twenty miles. The snowy summits that stand out in the 
distance are the Uri-Bothstock and its neighbors. You 
remember we saw them some time ago from the shore of 
Lake Lucerne, when we were at Sisikon (Stereograph 14). 
Then we were looking at them from the opposite side. 

It has been said that nobody with less than a poet's 
imagination ever ought to undertake to be a shepherd or 
a keeper of cows. Surely a poet might be glad to take 
the situation here. Think of having these majestic, 
snowy, sunshiny solitudes all around one, through the 
long days! Switzerland, as a matter of fact, has not pro- 
duced any great number of poets in the sense of poem- 
writers, but every Swiss country boy with any spark of 



110 SWITZEBLAND THROUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 



imagination is deeply impressed by scenes like these. 
The " Eanz des Vaches," or milking call, by which the 
pastured cows are gathered at night, is something that 
every country boy knows. There is more than one ver- 
sion of air and words, but the ideas of the various songs 
are about the same. 

" The herdsmen of the Colombettes 
At the dawn of day have arisen ; 

Ha— ah ! Ha— ah ! 
Cows, cows, to the milking come ! 
Come here, all of you, 
White ones and black ones, 
Red and brindled, 
Young ones, old ones, 
Under this oak tree, 
Where I will milk you ; 
Under this poplar 
Where I will drain you ; 
Cows, cows, to the milking come ! " 

It is said that years ago, when the Swiss were accus- 
tomed to serve as soldiers in France, an order was passed 
strictly forbidding the military bands to play any of the 
familiar mountain airs. It had proven a dangerous in- 
dulgence. The best-trained soldiers had attacks of home- 
sickness and depression at the sound of the notes they 
associated with home scenes among the mountains. Some- 
times they fell sick in body. Sometimes they actually 
deserted. The longing for home became stronger than 
anything else on earth. 

See the sheep here, that some boy has in his own 
charge. We can observe, too, at quite close range, the 
way in which the roofs of these sheds are loaded with 
stones. Buildings like these are common everywhere in 



THE GRINDELWALD — FIESCHER GLACIER 



111 



this part of the country; some are barns for hay, some are 
stables, some are mountain dairies where cheese is made 
in a manner not particularly appetizing to observe. The 
best cheeses are sold and constitute the chief income of 
many farmers; the skim-milk cheeses, somewhat less pala- 
table but still fairly nutritious, form a good part of the 
daily food of the farmer's family. 

Our next movement takes us to a point five miles down 
this valley, which lies open ahead of us, to the village of 
G-ydisdorf. There we can turn and look directly south, 
through an opening between this nearest dark slope (the 
Eiger) and the square base of the Schreckhorn beyond it. 
We shall be looking in a direction at right angles to that 
in which we are looking now. Consult Map No. 5 once 
more and you will find the place marked 31. 

31* Immense Glacier Basin beneath the Fiescherhorn, 
looking through Grindelwald Gorge 

One of the surprising things about a first visit to these 
Alpine regions is to see how close villages and farms may 
be to the eternal ice-fields. Here at Grydisdorf you see 
how it is. Trees and grass grow at the very edge of the 
glacier. If you were to go down there through the trees, 
you might pick field flowers in bloom within arm's length 
of the ice that has pushed down from the heights of the 
Fiescherhorn, straight ahead of us yonder at the south. 

Fifty years ago all the scientists in Europe were study- 
ing glaciers. Agassiz, you remember, was Swiss by birth, 
though America is proud of him as her adopted son. He 



112 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

and Professor Tyndall and other investigators put years 
of patient observation into the problem of the formation 
and the action of huge ice-streams like this. They even 
measured the rate at which certain glaciers hereabouts 
were moving, marking points on the ice surface in rela- 
tion to fixed points on the valley walls, and noting the 
change in these relations from one month or one year to 
another. Of course the motion of glaciers like this is 
imperceptible at any given moment; but some of them 
move at the rate of twenty to thirty inches in a day. The 
lower end is perpetually wasted by melting and running 
off in the form of mountain streams; the upper end is 
continually being pushed downwards under the ever- 
renewed pressure of additional snow. And so it goes on 
and on, scraping off the mountain slopes, grinding off the 
valley walls, and so gradually making ready the raw mate- 
rial for future fields and farms. 

The Gydisdorf people used to make the glacier useful 
in an immediate and thrifty fashion of their own, quarry- 
ing the ice and shipping it to Paris; but that industry is 
not carried on now on any large scale. 

This particular ice-stream is, on the whole, wasting be- 
low faster than it is renewed above; it is what they call 
a " dying " glacier, shrinking from year to year. The 
change is slow, like the drying up of a river; but certain 
local landmarks tell the tale. You see just over the gable 
of this chalet a little building down yonder at the edge 
of the glacier? Years ago that spot was all surrounded 
by ice. 



THE MOVEMENTS OF GLACIERS 



113 



You can see from here something of the surface irregu- 
larity and raggedness of the ice that still occupies the 
valley-bed. Travellers are sometimes disappointed by 
the sight of such dirty masses as these are, discolored by 
the stones and loose earth that they have snatched from 
terra firma while moving along. As a matter of fact, it 
is not at all beautiful under these circumstances; but 
when we think what the dirt means, — how it shows the 
glacier's task of rock-grinding actually in the process, — 
the dirty ice comes to have an interest of its own. It is 
still poetic, only in a different key. 

We can see from here how the surface of the glacier is 
seamed and cracked. The glacier-ice is plastic; it can 
take the shape of a certain space, but it is not elastic; so, 
when pushed over an irregular surface, it cracks open, and 
the cracks may be anywhere from fifteen feet to fifteen 
hundred feet in depth. 

Just beyond this mountain at our left the Lower Grin- 
delwald Glacier comes in from the east to join the other 
ice-stream. It was only a few years ago that a shepherd, 
crossing the Lower Grindelwald, fell into an enormously 
deep crevasse; he escaped by following along the bed of a 
nver underneath uncountable thousands of tons of ice, 
and reached the outer world at last, almost like one de- 
livered from the grave. 

It is difficult to imagine just what these tremendous 
fissures are like until we have seen them at close range. 
Suppose we take a path along the mountain-side, and fol- 
low, for a little way, a route taken by men who climb the 



114 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Jungfrau. The spot where we are to halt for our out- 
look is marked 32. 

[ 32. The Ascent of Jungfrau. Crossing the Glacier 

Now we begin to see what it means to traverse these 
Alpine heights and valleys. Seen at a distance, this 
chasm would be only a streak in the general whiteness, if 
it showed at all. The guides make little of crossing it as 
it is; but the undertaking seems to a novice exciting in- 
deed. You see the three men are tied together by a rope 
in the traditional Alpine fashion. One guide (at the left 
side of the gulf) has already leaped over. Now he stands 
with his feet in nail-studded shoes, well braced, and the 
other guide, at the other side, stands likewise braced, while 
the third man makes ready for his own leap to the farther 
side. A clever mountain climber can do that easily; and, 
even if the leap should be short or the first foothold in- 
sufficient, letting him fall into the crevasse, the rope 
around his waist is more than sufficient to hold his weight. 
The guides can pull him up, none the worse for a dis- 
agreeable experience. The ropes approved and used by 
members of the great Alpine Clubs have a distinguishing 
strand of red running through their whole length. They 
are subjected to the severest tests of sudden strain and 
heavy weight before they are put upon the market, and 
they practically never break during a reasonable term of 
service. They can, however, be cut, and sometimes a 
sharp edge of rock or of ice has acted the part of a knife, 
with disastrous results. There is a good deal in knowing 



CROSSING A CREVASSE 



115 



how to use a rope, — so the best guides say. It should be 
kept reasonably tight between the men all the time, else 
when a strain does come, it is too much of a shock and a 
foothold cannot be so well maintained. On the other 
hand, it must not be kept all the time at extreme tension, 
or nothing will be left for an emergency. Some guides 
say that the greatest service of the rope consists in its 
giving a " sense " of security; the security itself really de- 
pends chiefly on the climber's steadiness of head. After 
all, when you come to think of it, if a man can walk along 
the narrow top of a wall, three feet from the ground, the 
physical task of maintaining his balance is actually no 
greater when he is walking along a ridge three thousand 
feet above some Alpine valley. It is only a question of 
steadiness of nerve and a trained judgment in regard to 
the condition of the ice or snow that forms the ridge. 
It does send chills down the spine of one unaccustomed to 
such things, when an Alpine Club man tells how, on the 
brink of a precipice so many thousand feet high, he and 
his guide cautiously stamped upon a ridge of snow to see 
if it were solid and to pack it down into sufficient width 
to bear their feet, and then crossed, arms extended in air, 
as a tight-rope performer carries his balance-pole. 

Those alpenstocks that all the men carry are indis- 
pensable in climbing of this sort. They help a man 
brace against a sudden pull; they can give him a " pur- 
chase " in climbing; they can arrest a tendency to slide; 
they can prepare footholds for him in slippery places. 

See how dark the men and the sky and that farther 



116 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

mountain slope appear in contrast with the dazzling gla- 
cier. One cannot do much climbing hereabouts without 
the protection of linen masks, veils and colored spectacles. 

The ice varies in color according to its condition; a 
fractured surface often shows a beautiful deep blue; here 
the outer surface has been disintegrated by the weather 
till it has the effect of snow, but the mass underneath is 
like a rock. We can see here, at our very feet, traces of 
the work the glacier has been doing. These spots and 
streaks of dirt are a part of the rock material that is 
being carried away to make beds of gravel, — probably, 
sometime, beds of fertile soil. 

To think that all the fertile earth in the whole world 
has been made in this way by rivers of ice or rivers of 
water! 

If we turn back towards Gydisdorf once more, we can 
get a glimpse of a typical country road in this Oberland 
region. There are not only magnificent outlooks, but 
charmingly cosy nooks and corners in the region of the 
Grindelwald, spots that have great attractions in a simple, 
homely way. 

S3. A Country Hoad, Switzerland 

It seems like a scene in the theatre, suddenly trans- 
formed into reality; — very unlike our American country 
neighborhoods, so far as the buildings are concerned, and 
yet those steep, rocky, hillside pastures do look like New 
Hampshire hillsides. Quite right; all the school geog- 
raphies call New Hampshire "the Switzerland of Amer- 



THE UPPER GRINDELWALD GLACIER 117 

ica." Evidently these picturesque little chalets with 
their unpainted board walls and stone-weighted roofs be- 
long to energetic, thrifty people, for road and fences seem 
well kept (see how many different kinds of fence building 
they practice), and these village girls look as if they knew 
how to earn their pretty gowns by honest work. If we 
spoke to them we should find them answering in German. 
We are still in the German section of the country. You 
remember the Confederation, at the beginning, was a 
union of only three little northern cantons, and for years 
it was called simply the " Upper League of High Ger- 
many." The inclusion of the French and Italian speak- 
ing cantons was a matter of gradual growth. 

We are almost ready to leave the Grindelwald for a look 
into the other Swiss valleys, but before we go let us see 
another of the famous glaciers of the Bernese Alps. Look 
on the map (Map 5), a couple of miles east from Gydis- 
dorf, and you see a point marked 34. The map indicates 
that we shall be looking east across an arm of the Upper 
Grindelwald Glacier, and across the glacier to heights on 
the other side. 

34. Upper Grindelwald Glacier 

Does it look as you had anticipated it? People com- 
pare these ice formations to rivers; they are in a sense 
rivers of solid material. Does not this correspond in a 
striking way to a cataract of water like that of the Khine 
at Schaffhausen (Stereograph 1)? There surely is a 
strong resemblance between them, but this stream has an 



118 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

eerie look. The Rhine Falls made one think of mermaids. 
This is more likely to suggest giants and ghosts. 

In the old days, before the scientific men had attacked 
the problem of the origin and the destiny of glaciers, the 
people in these mountain lands often regarded them with 
superstitious dread. This glacier, for instance, seemed 
like a dreary, sinister Presence. Even as recently as 1719, 
the church authorities were entreated to exorcise it and 
prevent its advance; but the best church authority avail- 
able could not decide whether the glacier was put here 
by the providence of God or the will of Satan, so it was 
thought wiser not to meddle with it. 

The question of distances and dimensions is always puz- 
zling here. It is about one mile to those farthest cliffs. 
The height of these " waves " of ice varies, but that cre- 
vasse which we saw on the Grindelwald-Fiescher Glacier 
(Stereograph 32) gives us an idea of what some of these 
might be if we were to undertake crossing them to reach 
the farther side of this valley. And, besides crevasses, we 
should find holes or wells here and there, some of them a 
few feet deep, some of them (so Agassiz estimated) hun- 
dreds of feet deep. 

Do you see that great boulder over at our left, imbedded 
in the ice? It looks as if its corners had been broken off 
and its surface deeply scratched by the glacier's rough 
handling, as a pebble is worn and broken by tumbling 
about in a river-bed. You know how often geologists ex- 
plain the presence of boulders of certain material in cer- 
tain regions by saying they must have been transported 



THE UPPEE GRINDELWALD GLACIER 119 



from their original setting by moving ice during a long 
past glacial period? Switzerland is the best place in the 
world to study geology. Here the Glacial Period is not 
yet outgrown. 

Three generations of naturalists have studied glacial 
phenomena since Agassiz was a professor at Neuchatel 
and wrote his famous paper on the subject. (They called 
Agassiz the " Father of the Glacial Theory." The monu- 
ment over his grave is a block of stone from the moraine 
of the great glacier of the Aare). It was in connection 
with some interesting experiments to ascertain the depth 
of a certain well in this Upper Grindelwald Glacier that 
a famous tragedy took place several years ago. A clergy- 
man from Grindelwald came over with a guide and was 
trying to calculate the vertical depth of one of the holes 
by reference to the number of seconds intervening be- 
tween the fall of a stone from the top and the return of 
sound indicating that it had reached the bottom. In his 
eagerness to hear accurately, he leaned too far out, rest- 
ing his weight on his alpenstock. The ice-rim suddenly 
gave way and he fell headlong into the hole. The guide, 
panic-stricken and powerless, returned to Grindelwald to 
report the accident; but, for some reason, the people did 
not believe his story. In short, he was accused of having 
robbed and murdered the missing man. This state of 
things could not be endured by the man's friends, nor, 
indeed, by his brother guides, who felt that the honor of 
their trade was at stake. A rescue-party was made up 
and many of the villagers went with the party back to the 



120 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



glacier to await developments. Lots were cast to decide 
on one man who should be let down into the well by a 
rope. The village priest gave him the sacrament, as if 
he were about to die, and he was lowered into the depths 
between the ice-walls. More rope was needed, and more, 
and more. At last he reached the bottom and found the 
clergyman's body just where it had fallen. The rope 
measurement, made afterwards, showed that it was seven 
hundred and fifty feet below the spot where he had stood 
leaning on his alpenstock! 

That is the tragic side of Swiss life. There is a merry 
side, too. These guides who have piloted us over the 
glaciers know cosy homes and hospitable country inns 
where there are rest and refreshment to make them for- 
get past perils. If you would like to see these sturdy 
fellows off duty, look at a group before the door of a house 
in Meiringen. Meiringen can be found on the map some 
twenty-five miles across-country, northeast from Gydis- 
dorf, over the mountains and down again into the valley 
of the river Aare. The specific location is numbered 35. 

35. "Youthful years and maiden beauty, 
Joy with them should still abide, 
Instinct take the place of duty, 
Love, not reason, guide." 

Again we feel as if this were a bit of stage setting; but 
it is the natural, everyday thing for these Swiss folk. The 
girls' gowns are much like those we saw about Gydisdorf, 
but the headgear of the damsel on the door-steps is some- 
thing new and rather picturesque. Just see the quaint 



A GLIMPSE OF MEIRINGEN 



121 



build of that table with the spreading legs and the barred 
window with the wooden shutter. Have you noticed how 
the outer wall of the house is ornamented with horizontal 
bands of wood-earving? The carving of wood is a charac- 
teristic industry of the town. Fathers teach the children. 
Whole families work at carving just as whole families 
work in the fields in a farming region, and make a fair 
livelihood by putting their earnings together, though the 
wage-rate is surprisingly low when you consider the length 
of time spent in work. The standard of living is different 
here. Americans of the same degree of intelligence ex- 
pect more. Of course there is an endless market for 
wood-carvings. Everybody who comes to Switzerland 
buys them, and troops of tourists make a point of coming 
to Meiringen and Hasli in August to see the annual fes- 
tival, with its races and wrestling matches. They have 
held these athletic tournaments in the same neighborhood 
for years and years. 

You see by reference to the map that Meiringen is on 
the river Aare. The Eeichenbach, which helps carry off 
the melting snows from the east side of the Wetterhorn 
comes pouring its contributions into the Aare, already full 
to overflowing, and in years past sudden floods have done 
serious damage to the town. Now the river banks are pro- 
tected against freshets by a dike a thousand feet long. 
Swiss engineering is as famous as Parisian surgery. 

Shall we move on? These Meiringen damsels are excel- 
lent company, but meanwhile the mountains are calling 
us. We must follow the example of the youth with the 



122 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

banner inscribed " Excelsior." He, too, was tempted by 
maidens offering him five-o'clock tea, but he tore himself 
away! 

Just above this town the Aare makes its way northward 
through a remarkable cleft in the rocks. See the spot 
marked 36 near the right upper corner of Map No. 5. 

36. The Wonderful Gorge of the Hirer Aare 

It is well worth a journey, is it not? That is the river, 
of which we get just a glimpse, away down below. The 
sky? — that is above our heads, it is true, but from just this 
point we cannot see the sky at all, the near folded pre- 
cipices shut us in so closely. This gorge is a quarter of a 
mile long and the river waters, confined within these nar- 
row walls, have worn their track deeper and deeper as 
ages have gone by. The depth of the water in this part of 
the river is said to be more than seventy-five feet; but 
after it issues from the gorge, it widens into a stream a 
hundred feet broad, rejoicing in its freedom like a wild 
creature let out of its cage. In some places these cliffs 
stand five hundred feet above the present level of the 
river-bed. The waters that we see away down below have 
come from farther south near the head-waters of the 
Rhone; we shall see by and by the region where the Aare 
was born. Now the river is on its way to Lake Brienz, and 
past Interlaken (Stereograph 23) through the Lake of 
Thun (Stereograph 22); these very waters will encircle 
Berne (Stereograph 17) and flow on to pour themselves 
into the Rhine, moving towards the North Sea. 



THE GORGE OF THE AAEE 



123 



Here is another chapter of geologic history illustrated 
right before our eyes in this dusky gorge. You see those 
lichens, clustering thick on the wall of rock just opposite 
us at the right? And do you remember the botanists say 
that certain kinds of lichen are the most primitive forms 
of vegetable organism known to live on land? Nobody 
can pretend to say just why these living things should 
begin to live, gathering their substance from solid rock 
and atmospheric moisture, digesting these raw materials 
and making them over into the organism of a plant, but so 
it is. These delicate crusts of gray and green and orange 
and brown gradually eat away the surface of rock masses, 
crumbling off bits here and bits there and leaving a rough- 
ened surface more readily splintered by frosts and more 
efficaciously scraped by glaciers. The glacier is gigantic, 
the lichen is apparently insignificant; but between them 
the solid rocks are being worn away as inevitably as a 
plank is worn down under the carpenter's plane. 

We are in the world's workshop now. 

Thousands of travellers come here every year, and from 
every part of Europe and America. It is, of course, the 
influx of tourists that has led to the construction of this 
fine gallery-walk through the gorge. The Swiss are, as a 
rule, quick to see the material advantages to be gained by 
showing off the remarkable and beautiful features of local 
scenery; but, as a general thing, they keep their enterprises 
within reasonable limitations of good taste. There are 
projects for building railways up the Jungfrau, the Wet- 
terhorn and Mont Blanc. Perhaps when the time comes 



124 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

for those projects to materialize, people will forget their 
present prejudices and find poetry still somewhere at the 
heart of such a new regime. 

We might spend an indefinitely long time in the Ober- 
land; but, according to our present itinerary, we are to in- 
clude other sections of Switzerland as well. We shall 
come back to this Bernese section again, but at present 
we are to go down the Rhine Valley and then southeast to 
the Engadine. On our return we will visit the southern 
side of the Bernese range along the Rhone Valley. 



DISENTIS AND THE VIA MALA 

Now let us take our bearings afresh, since we are to 
see another section of the country. Turn to the General 
Map, Map No. 1, and our next movement can be traced 
there. The region where we have been journeying, 
known as the Bernese Oberland, is marked by a rectangle 
in red near the centre of the map. Almost straight east 
from Meiringen you see the town of Disentis, about thirty 
miles away, beside the Ehine. It seems surprising to 
find the Rhine away up here in the heart of Switzerland, 
although we always knew it had its source among these 
mountains. Germany has so long appropriated the Rhine 
to her own purposes in song, story and music, that we 
half forget how much of the river's course is here under 
the shadow of the Alps. At Disentis we can take a long 
look down the Rhine Valley. 

37* Looking down the Rhine Valley from Disentis 

Now we are looking north-eastward towards the Aus- 
trian Tyrol. The Eiger and the Monch, the Jungfrau, the 
Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald valleys, all are behind us. 
Lucerne and Zurich are away at our left. Lake Como 
and Italy lie far beyond the mountains on our right. 
These ranges melting into hazy distance seem gentle and 

125 



126 SWITZEBLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

peaceful in spirit in comparison with the Terror Peak and 
the Storm Peak of Grindelwald (Stereograph 24); but, 
after -all, they are less mild than they look. Avalanches 
have many a time descended from their sides, and it is 
thanks to thick forests above the town that these buildings 
stand to-day. Only a few years ago an avalanche fell a 
quarter of a mile away, down the valley, and the sudden 
rush of wind which followed took one of the steeples off 
the convent. 

This is one of the oldest towns in Switzerland, for the 
village is the outgrowth of a little settlement clustered 
around a church and monastery established thirteen hun- 
dred years ago (a.d. 614). The great Emperor Frederick 
Barbarossa came here on a visit in his time, and many 
other great men have been entertained by the successors 
of the first Benedictine monks. Napoleon's men burned 
the town in 1799, so none of the present buildings show 
great age. The rulers at the abbey have many times been 
men of great ability, dignity and wealth, highly honored 
by the powers at Eome. In 1570 the abbot here was a 
Prince of the Holy Eoman Empire. It was no sinecure, 
ruling this abbey and its dependencies during the Middle 
Ages. All through this eastern country the secular lords 
and barons were a bad lot, tyrannical, greedy, remorseless 
regarding the wrongs of the common people, and the ab- 
bots of Disentis sometimes took the side of the people 
when trouble arose. In 1524, before this region was in- 
cluded in the general Confederation of Switzerland, there 
was a separate Confederation here in the Orisons, made up 



EARLY TIMES IN DISENTIS 



127 



of three smaller Leagues. Each parish or commune was 
practically an independent republic, making its own laws 
and sending its own delegates to a general Diet or council. 
It was only one hundred years ago (1803) that the canton 
of Grisons became a part of the Swiss Republic. 

If this woman were to be questioned about her errand, 
it is possible that we might not understand her even 
though we knew French, German and Italian. This is 
one of the districts where Eomansch is commonly spoken, 
— a survival of the colloquial Latin learned during the 
years of the Eoman occupation fifteen hundred years ago. 
Newspapers are published here in Eomansch. Now that 
communication with the rest of the world has come to be 
so easy, the speaking of Eomansch will probably grow 
more and more restricted until it practically dies out; but 
at the present time it furnishes a very interesting instance 
of the persistence of linguistic tradition in an isolated dis- 
trict. 

The gorge of the Aare, which we saw but a short time 
ago (Stereograph 36), has its rivals in point of grandeur, — 
chief among them the Via Mala, some twenty-five miles 
east from Disentis, where a branch of the Ehine has cut 
out a deep valley between wooded cliffs. If you wish to 
see an ideal site for the castle of a mediaeval baron, you 
can find it there. See the general map of Switzerland, 
and the lines connected with the number 38 extending 
toward the north. 



128 SWITZEELAND THEOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 



38. Looking down the Via Mala {north) toward Thusis 
and the Mhine 

Think of being a seventh-century baron in a castle on 
the summit of that cliff at the right! There is a tradition 
that certain ruins standing on the farther summit date 
back to the days of an Etruscan chief, driven out of Italy 
by the Gauls in the third century before Christ; but really 
the seventh-century history ought to be enough to satisfy 
the most romantic taste. There used to be a chapel up 
there near the castle, four hundred feet above the village 
in the valley. It was the first Christian church anywhere 
about this part of the country. 

The cliffs in some parts of this gorge stand sixteen hun- 
dred feet high and only about ten feet apart. Long ages 
ago there was a great lake just above here (behind us, to 
the south), and its outlet was through this narrow valley. 
Now the lake itself is drained, and the river must be much 
smaller than in olden times, but in width it cannot vary 
much from what it was; the cliffs tell their own story. 

That cluster of houses out beyond the end of the valley 
is the town of Thusis. The stream that we see foaming 
in the shadow and flashing in the sun far down below us 
here will go flowing past Thusis and on to join the Ehine 
this side of those dark mountains that cut off the view. 
Look at the map and you will readily understand or recall 
the lay of the land. The Ehine, after taking in the 
waters of this tumbling stream, flows on around the high 
lands of which those distant hills are a part, and sweeps 



HILLSIDE TREES IN THE GORGE 



129 



through Lake Constance lying beyond those hills. It 
seems still here, under the shadow of these gigantic cliffs, 
but really all is full of purposeful motion. These yery 
waters will some day lose themselves alongside the dikes 
of " brave little Holland." The world is small. This 
mountain stream and the North Sea are near relations. 

There is a charm about this valley which nobody could 
quite put into words though we all feel it. The gorge of 
the Aare seemed just blocked out by the workman, its lines 
full of dignity, but stern to the point of awesome severity. 
Here the close growth of trees seems to lend an ineffable 
grace to the dominant lines of the valley. The trees, you 
see, do not contradict nor even veil the absolute up-and- 
down character of the rocks. Their aspiring little trunks 
eagerly repeat the very same idea of vertical direction, 
over and over and over, but they are so delicate, so 
feathery; they know how to sway and swing as well as to 
stand upright, and so they give us a grateful sense of light- 
ness and freedom and willing response in place of the 
sense of being commanded and crushed. Is that a part 
of the reason why the place is so beautiful? The world 
never means exactly the same thing to the owners of any 
two pairs of eyes. 



THE ENGADINE 



We move on now toward the eastern part of Swit- 
zerland. Look at the general map (No. 1) and yon will 
find a section marked off by a rectangle in the extreme 
east, a part of the canton of Grisons just above the Italian 
line. This section yon have again, enlarged by itself, as 
Map No. 6. Open now, Map No. 6, a map of the Upper 
Engadine and Bernina group, where the details of the 
country can be traced to better advantage. You see this 
region, being so near the Italian frontier, partakes to quite 
an extent of the character of an Italian district. Most of 
the mountain names and river names are Italian in form. 

Our first outlook in this particular section is marked 39 
upon this map. You will find it a little south of the cen- 
tral portion. The radiating lines show that we shall be 
looking a little east of south, that we shall look down from 
a height over a glacier, or rather over the junction of two 
glaciers which sweep off toward our left. There will evi- 
dently be a height rising before us separating the two 
glaciers, and several heights in the distance. The Bernina 
peak we shall expect to see at our left and the Eoseg 
farther to the right. Now turn to the stereograph itself 
and let us see how these anticipations are realized. 
130 



THE BERNINA AND THE ROSEG 



131 



39. Nature's Cathedrals, I*iz Bernina and Moseg, 
Moseg Valley, Engadine 

It all is just as we knew it would be, — the main features 
of the place related to each other precisely as the map 
predicted. That is the Bernina of course, — the huge 
mass at the left, partly rock ridges and partly volumes of 
snow and ice. It is about five miles away from where we 
stand now. The darker mountain between us and the 
Bernina is the Tschierva, and the Eoseg is that rounded 
mountain straight before us, with the many jagged peaks 
separated by snow ridges. The boundary line of Italy is, 
you remember, on the farther side of these very moun- 
tains. It hardly seems possible that a land which we 
think of as the home of perpetual summer can be so near 
these fields of ice and snow, but the slope towards the 
Mediterranean brings one of the most sudden changes in 
climate to be found in all Europe. For centuries these 
mountains were regarded as practically impregnable. 
There were a few feasible passes between the extreme 
heights of this range, making routes across and down into 
Italy; but the summits themselves were never climbed 
until about fifty years ago. The first ascent of the Ber- 
nina yonder was made by a Swiss in 1850. Since then 
several successful attempts have been made to reach the 
summit, sometimes by Englishmen (the English members 
of the Alpine Club have been among the most enthusias- 
tic mountain-climbers in Swiss history), sometimes by 
Italians, sometimes by French, Americans and the native 



132 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



Swiss. The Eoseg was never climbed until 1865. Al- 
though it is not so high as the Bernina, the ascent is un- 
usually difficult by reason of certain sharp ridges which 
are exceedingly dangerous to pass. The route usually 
taken by travellers is up this side to that first pyramidal 
shoulder, then along the ridge extending from that 
nearer pyramid toward the rough rock dome beyond. 

Forty years ago there were bears on the lower slopes 
of the Koseg, but those animals, which used to be so com- 
mon in Switzerland centuries ago, are now practically 
extinct in these regions. Indeed the chamois themselves, 
whose chase used to give a large number of native Swiss 
their distinctive profession and means of livelihood, are 
becoming fewer and fewer. A few years ago one of the 
chamois hunters of this neighborhood, crossing a glacier 
on the Eoseg, fell into a deep crevasse and escaped in a 
way similar to that of a man down in the Unter Grindel- 
wald. He was so fortunate as to fall completely through 
the great crevasse and come out underneath the surface 
of the glacier by following the course of one of the 
streams which carried off the melting ice. 

Though there is no danger from bears or other wild 
beasts in climbing the mountains about here, the perils of 
the mountains themselves are a very serious thing to 
reckon with. Then, besides the momentary possibility of 
a fatal accident, there are all sorts of minor inconveniences 
to which a would-be mountaineer has to become accus- 
tomed until he can make little of them. One is what they 
call the " mountain sickness." The guides differ in their 



MOUNTAIN CLIMBING 



133 



explanation of the cause of it. The symptoms are parti} 7 
like those of sea-sickness and partly like those of a condi- 
tion of sheer exhaustion. The rarefication of the air on 
these great heights has more to do with it than anything 
else, although the weariness caused by climbing has prob- 
ably also a good deal to do with it. As the air grows more 
and more rare it is natural to breath more and more 
rapidly in order to supply the lungs with sufficient oxygen, 
and the tendency is to keep the mouth too much open and 
exposed. This naturally dries the throat and causes a 
very distressing thirst, all the more distressing because, 
of course, ice and snow are a very poor means of satisfying 
it, and the amount of desirable drink which can be carried 
on a climbing excursion is naturally limited. Besides 
these inconveniences, the daring ones who climb such 
heights as these just ahead of us must expect to have nose- 
bleed caused by the rarefying of the air and the unbal- 
anced pressure of the blood in the body. On the whole, 
if we sit here on the rock with our Swiss friend, we lose 
the excitement and glory of the climbing, but we also lose 
a good many uncomfortable experiences that belong with 
the climbing. Let us be content this time with the more 
commonplace experience of looking at the mountains from 
this modest height. 

The experience is commonplace only by comparison 
with the fascinations of an actual ascent. Indeed, as we 
look out upon these giant slopes it hardly seems as if we 
could ask for anything more in the way of inspiration and 
uplift than we get from the pure sense of vision. It 



131 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

seems very strange that people should for so many cen- 
turies have thought of mountain heights like these as 
merely dead and barren wastes, places of horror and dread; 
but so it was until people began to understand nature 
toward the close of the eighteenth century. You remem- 
ber how it was when Wordsworth and Coleridge and the 
other lake poets in England, and when Eousseau in 
France, began to tell the rest of the world what the uni- 
verse all around them meant. Coleridge's masterpiece, 
you know, was inspired by Mont Blanc. 

How beautiful those pines are, outlined against the 
glacier in the valley! That species of pine, — the arolla, — 
is common over all this part of Switzerland although in 
some districts the deciduous larch appears to be coming 
up to take its place. The timber of the arolla pine is very 
generally used all through Switzerland for house building 
and the minor purposes of domestic cabinet-making, and 
it is also an admirable fuel. Until quite recent years, 
when modern conveniences have distributed themselves 
pretty generally through even remote country districts, it 
was not uncommon for splinters of this resinous wood to 
be lighted and used for candles in country households. 
Now electric lights are following the telephone. 

One more look at that sweeping ice-river before us. 
You see those ridges of debris which mark the sides and 
the middle of the stream? Ridges like those (they are 
what the geologists call " moraines ") are traceable for 
centuries after a glacier itself has disappeared, and in our 
own country very often testify to the existence of glaciers 



THE MORTEBATSCH GLACIER 



135 



ages ago, in regions which have long been occupied by 
fertile fields under sunny skies. 

We will turn back now oyer this grassy hill where the 
Alpine flowers are thick among the grass blades, and make 
a journey towards the east to look at the other side of the 
peak of the Bernina. Consult Map No. 6 once more and 
you will find at the right of our present standpoint an- 
other marked 40, from which the outlook is indicated as 
toward the southwest. There, you see, we may expect to 
find glacier streams again near us; — one sweeping away 
toward the right out of our range of vision, and the other 
coming down nearer our standpoint. In the distance, ac- 
cording to the map, we shall see the Bernina at our right; 
the Bella Vista towards the left and various dark ridges of 
rock standing out from the masses of snow and ice which 
almost fill the field of view. 

40. Bella Vista, Biz Bernina and the Morteratsch \ 
Glacier, Engadine^ 

We are still looking towards sunny Italy, though here 
the sunshine seems only to light up the coldness of the ice 
and to give little suggestion of summer's beauty. These 
trees near us are pines of the same species as those that we 
recently saw. It is the Morteratsch Glacier which runs 
off to the right beyond the pines. You remember the 
map showed it as extending for several miles almost 
directly north down the valley. There is a local tradition 
that a good many years ago a shepherd and a dairy-maid 
who were in love with each other used to meet on a pas- 



136 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

ture hillside down in the valley just before us, a part of 
the valley now occupied by ice. The course of true love 
did not run smooth; the parents of the maiden objected 
to the match; the lover went off to war, the sweetheart 
married a man not of her choice and then died, but her 
ghost used to come back day after day and see to things 
in the Alpine dairy where she had spent so many happy 
years working and anticipating the visits of her lover. The 
herdsmen used to pay great respect to the sad ghost, tak- 
ing pains not to intrude upon it; but, after a time, when 
new men came to have charge of the cows in the pasture, 
the same consideration was not shown. The dairy-maid's 
ghost disappeared, and when it went away good luck went 
away also; the cows dried, the grass in the pasture failed, 
the glacier advanced farther and farther, till at last it 
quite covered the hillside and buried the scene of the old- 
time love-making under masses of solid ice. 

Do you remember, as you look toward these mountains, 
how much they have meant in their bearing on the des- 
tinies of Europe, and, in fact, the destinies of the 
whole world? The fact that this practically impas- 
sable mountain wall stood at the north of Italy 
limited the reach of Eoman power, holding it to the 
Mediterranean shores and the regions beyond the Mediter- 
ranean. It is true, of course, that the power of Eome 
did reach out here and there toward the north, but on the 
whole this mountain wall which we look at now, separat- 
ing the Latin peoples from the Germanic peoples, kept the 
civilization of the one apart from the life of the other 



THE BERNXNA RANGE 



137 



until the time came when Eome was in its decadence and 
the barbarians were the stronger race. 

Perhaps it seems a far-fetched reflection to consider 
that Luther's religion and Goethe's poetry and the music 
of Handel, Mozart and Wagner would probably never have 
had their present part in our lives but for the fact that 
these mountains stood where they stand; yet is it not 
true? 

Map No. 6 shows another desirable point of view a mile 
south of our present stand. It is marked 41 and indicates 
that we shall look almost exactly south from the Diavo- 
lezza Pass. Look carefully at the map and forecast once 
more the general disposition of the rock- and snow-masses 
at which we are going to look. You see the peak of the 
Cambrena will be somewhat beyond the range of our 
vision on our left, the peaks of Palu will be in the distance 
before us, with three parallel ridges of dark rock extend- 
ing out of the glacier, curving around towards the right 
below our feet. 

Peaks of Palu, wrapped in Eternal Snows, 
Bernina Group, Engadine 

It is between two and three miles across to the heights 
just opposite where we stand, although it looks to be a 
much shorter distance. Again, the simplicity of these 
great masses of rock and snow deceives us with regard to 
their dimensions. It seems as if those might be only snow 
drifts a little larger than the ordinary, covering ledges a 
little higher than the ordinary; but remembering what we 



138 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

have already seen we can readily believe the truth about 
them, which is that the snow ridges which look twenty 
feet high may easily be one hundred feet high instead, and 
the rock ridges which look to be fifty or sixty feet across 
may mean cliffs five or six hundred feet high piled up one 
section above another, impassable or all but impassable by 
reason of their coating of ice and the extreme steepness of 
the angles at which they rise. Mountain-climbers declare 
that the only way to obtain an experimental faith in the 
size of mountains is to climb them. A little black knob, 
as we here consider it, may mean a cliff a hundred feet 
high; a bluish streak of light may be the mouth of a 
yawning crevasse; the streaked surface of a rock which 
looks as if it were ruled by a pencil may stand for the 
furrowed path of an enormous avalanche. A practiced 
mountaineer measures the size of mountains, after all, not 
so much by the way they look or by abstract feet, but by 
liis memory of hours of muscular exertion. He counts 
the steepness of a mountain not by degrees as a surveyor 
does, but by his memory of how it felt to climb the slope 
of ice or snow rising in an almost vertical line above his 
head. 

Just see the shadows cast by the eastern sun. It would 
be a magnificent sight to view a sunrise from the top of 
one of these peaks. They say that on a clear morning the 
first coloring of the sky is often a deep purplish blue; the 
neighboring mountain peaks light up one by one, catching 
the gleam of the sun long before any light has reached the 
valleys or the ordinary levels of the earth. People who 



OK MOUNTAIN HEIGHTS 



139 



have done much mountain-climbing say that the experi- 
ence curiously reverses the ordinary way of regarding 
mountains and valleys. We who stay down on the lower 
levels measure everything from the standpoint of the 
levels, thinking of the mountains as exceptions to a rule. 
When you look down from a mountain peak, so the moun- 
taineers tell us, everything shows itself in relations the 
reverse of this. The mountains seem to be the real things. 
They form the standpoint by which to measure everything 
else. The valleys are only spaces between them. 

It would seem as if these guides who spend so much 
time upon great heights with enormous outlooks ought to 
develop a fine philosophy of life and of the world. Some 
of them do. After all it depends more on the individual 
than on the nature and circumstances of his daily work. 
Whymper, the English mountain-climber, who has written 
such interesting books about his experiences, speaks of 
his acquaintance with certain guides to whom the experi- 
ence of climbing great heights was actually an inspiration. 
One man in particular with whom he did a good deal of 
climbing, — a poor little fellow who was not actually a pro- 
fessional guide but only a porter carrying burdens to help 
out the cleverer men, — used to feel an actual religious 
rapture in the presence of great heights and vast solitudes. 
He was like the lonely Scotchman whom Mr. Hamilton 
Mabie met away up in the Highlands. The man stood at 
a little distance with head bared and bowed, and Mr. 
Mabie, as the story goes, hesitated for a moment to ap- 
proach him, explaining afterwards: "I thought that you 



140 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



were at your devotions." " Oh," said the Scotchman, " I 
was only taking off my cap to the beauty of the world." 

All this time there are most enchanting spots all around 
us and behind us; especially off here at our right there is 
a region which we must not miss seeing, — the heart of the 
Upper Engadine, about the lakes. Map No. 6 shows the 
region in question near the centre of the district that is 
given on this special sheet, extending from southwest to 
northeast. The whole valley in which the lakes lie is at a 
very high level; but, high as it is, it is surrounded by 
mountains still higher. We will go up to a summit where 
you see the spot marked 42 and look almost directly north 
over the little lake called the Hahnensee, and down still 
farther over the town of St. Moritz and another lake which 
lies beside the town. It would be a good plan right here 
to refer once more to the general map of Switzerland, 
Map No. 1, finding the section of the Engadine over in the 
eastern part of the country and noticing what there is to 
the north of the Hahnensee and St. Moritz. We shall be 
looking, you observe, across the eastern end of Switzer- 
land, over a part of the canton of G-risons, towards the end 
of Lake Constance. Wurtemburg lies still farther to the 
north. The Bernese Alps will be off at our left, — the 
Oberland through which we have been journeying and 
where we have looked out upon the Wetterhorn and the 
Schreekhorn, the Jungfrau, the Eiger and the Monch. 



LIFE IN THE ENGADINE 



141 



42. Upper Engadine, northeast from the Hahnensee 

Is it not an enchanting outlook? This is the Hahnen- 
see, the little lake just below us, and the farther lake is 
that of St. Moritz, with the town over there on the 
western shore. St. Moritz itself is as high above the sea 
level as the summit of the Kigi near Lucerne (Stereograph 
6) although it lies in a valley. The valley runs from 
southwest to northeast, and, what with the dryness of the 
air on account of the height, and its warmth on account 
of the exposure to southern sunshine, the valley is a 
favorite winter resort for invalids from all over the world. 
And the air is not the only medicinal agency at hand. 
There are mineral springs down in St. Moritz which have 
been known for centuries; in fact, as far back as 1539 
Paracelsus praised the virtues of the mineral waters here, 
and for fully four hundred years pilgrims have come to 
St. Moritz in search of health and strength. The waters 
are charged with iron, carbonates of lime, magnesia and 
sulphate of soda. People drink them and bathe in them 
besides, according to the orders of physicians, and their 
virtues are highly praised by the doctors of to-day. 

This lovely mountain country is a region of greater 
prosperity than are many of the other mountain valleys 
of Switzerland. A great many of the natives of the Enga- 
dine go away from home for a. term of years, making little 
fortunes in Paris and Vienna, Frankfort and Dresden and 
Berlin, and then come back to settle down on modest 
incomes for the rest of their lives. There is less poverty 



142 SWITZEELAND THBOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 

here than in most parts of Switzerland, and of course the 
great influx of visitors in summer, together with the pres- 
ence of a large number even in winter, provides a steady 
income for those of the people who are engaged in the 
business of keeping hotels and pensions. This is conse- 
quently one of the bits of earthly paradise where there are 
comparatively few reminders of the troubles born of 
grinding poverty. 

Beautiful as the view is, looking in this direction towards 
the Tyrol and Southern Germany, the outlook towards the 
south in the direction of Italy, directly behind us on our 
left, is, if possible, even lovelier. If we turn about, chang- 
ing our standpoint by only a few rods and look southwest 
over the Silzer and Silvaplana lakes we shall see a scene 
of ideal grandeur and beauty. See the lines connected 
with the number 43 on Map No. 6. 

43. The Beauty and Splendor of the Engadine, look- 
ing southwest from the Hahnensee to the Maloja 

Could anything be more beautiful than this view be- 
tween the mountain heights over these placid lakes, with 
the sunshiny sky above our heads? This lake (the two 
evidently were one not so very long ago, for the sand-bar 
dividing them shows on the very face of it that its origin 
was recent) seems just the one to have been named in our 
American Indian fashion, like Winnepesaukee in the heart 
of America's Switzerland, " the smile of the Great Spirit." 

We cannot help wondering as we look down this valley 
how long it will be that travellers will continue to have 



WINTER JOURNEYS OYER THE ALPS 143 



this outlook over smiling sheets of water. Just below us, 
down there at the right where we see the houses of Silva- 
plana, at the end of the nearer lake, we can see how 
deposits of sand and gravel, brought down by mountain 
streams, are gradually filling in the bed of the lake and 
forcing the waters to retreat. Surely it will not be so very 
many centuries before the bed of this valley will be made 
up of green fields, and the mountain travellers of those 
days sitting on this hill will be speculating as to how the 
valley must have looked when its ancient hollows were 
filled with water! The water, by the way, is now as clear 
as crystal. People have sometimes declared it was like 
liquid air, so clearly can one distinguish pebbles and other 
details below the surface. 

On this sunny summer day it is difficult to imagine how 
the place would appear when everything is covered deep 
with winter's snow, but if one wishes to help out his 
imagination in that way, Symond's account of the sleigh- 
ride which he took with his daughter in April, 1888, is 
very well worth reading.* It was at the close of a winter 
spent in Davos-am-Platze, a village twenty miles to the 
north from here, that the two undertook to come down to 
Silvaplana, and beyond through the Maloja Pass at the 
farther end of these lakes, to go down into Italy. The 
snows had been very heavy that year and in April the 
drifts were still of enormous depth. The travellers had 
to change horses many times in the course of the journey 

* A chapter in Our Home in the Swiss Highlands. John Adding- 
ton Symonds. 



144 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

and a great deal of the way the original roadways were 
entirely concealed by masses of rock avalanches and snow 
avalanches which had fallen during the winter and early 
spring. The snow-drifts were so soft at the time of mak- 
ing the journey that the danger of further avalanches was 
very great, and, according to the custom of this countrjr, 
the driver of the sleigh used no bells, — the vibration of 
bells has been known many a time to start the movement 
of an avalanche, causing great disaster. At one place on 
the road, not far above Silvaplana, the inn at which the 
travellers stopped for refreshment was reached by going 
down six feet below the road level, the snow-drifts having 
elevated the road to that extent. The telegraph posts, 
thirty feet high, were buried almost or entirely out of 
sight, their tips here and there projecting above the snow. 
It was a great relief to come down the last hill into the 
lighted streets of Silvaplana, down there on the edge of 
the lake, and know that the worst of the journey was over. 

The road down towards Italy, on the farther side of 
those distant mountains straight ahead, is a very steep and 
picturesque descent. It is quite a famous pass. We will 
go beyond the lakes and look at it now. The point from 
which we are to look is marked on Map No. 6 at the south- 
western extremity, just beyond the southwestern end of 
Silzer lake, by the red lines and the number 44. You see 
on this map the course of the highway is indicated by 
curiously crooked lines, and our standpoint is indicated as 
being on a hill just to the north of the roadway, looking 
across its curves towards the south. 



CHILDREN IN THE ORISONS 



145 



44. The Descent to Italy, Hoad winding down from 
the Maloja Pass, Engadine 

It takes skillful engineering to build a practicable road 
down these tremendously steep slopes. See how many 
turns the highway makes in order to render the passage 
feasible for carriages. The road-bed is kept in excellent 
condition, and, as a matter of fact, experienced drivers in 
these regions take carriages down the road at a high rate 
of speed, the horses being so sure-footed and so accus- 
tomed to the way that there are practically never serious 
accidents. 

We are still in the canton of Grisons, but so near the 
Italian line that the district is practically Italian in char- 
acter. We should very likely find Italian the tongue in 
which to talk with these children if we wished to compare 
notes with them about the delights of the sunshine, the 
flavor of the mountain strawberries and the prospects of 
good weather for to-morrow. Little folks are so used to 
mountain-climbing all about here that nobody has any 
fears for them. They take care of themselves and learn 
very quickly to keep a steady head on heights like this. 
Educational facilities are not so good in this part of Swit- 
zerland as in certain other cantons. The strongly Protes- 
tant communities pay much more attention to the quality 
of public-school instruction than do the cantons where 
the people are largely Eoman Catholic, but public schools 
of some character or other are maintained everywhere 
throughout the confederation. These little people have 
to be at their tasks a certain number of months each year, 



146 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

just as our American children do, although the range of 
study in a country district like this is naturally very 
limited. If they know anything about America, they 
probably have the idea of it which prevails through 
Europe, — that it is a land of golden promise where every- 
body can quickly become rich and great. It is a good 
thing to remember, though, in this connection, that it was 
a Swiss- American who said the most characteristically un- 
American thing which has ever been said about money- 
making. It was Louis Agassiz who replied when someone 
laid out for him a scheme of work which would bring in 
great profits, that he could not consider it; he really had 
no time to make money! 

That winding road has its fascinations! If we were to 
follow its alluring lines they would lead us down past 
Lake Como, the paradise of northern Italy, and on to the 
blue Mediterranean at Genoa. The sea is only one hun- 
dred and fifty miles away. But this time we shall turn 
our faces away from Italy, going westward toward Monte 
Eosa and the Matterhorn and the towering ice-cliffs of 
Mont Blanc. 



THE ST. GOTTHAED RAILWAY 



In this part of Switzerland some of the most remark- 
able engineering in the world has been done. 

Unless the local geography is perfectly clear in your 
memory, look once again at the General Map (No. 1). 
Forty miles west of Maloja the St. Gotthard railway 
crosses the country from north to south, on its way down 
from Lucerne to Milan. Near the railway station of 
Giornico (the place is marked by a small rectangle on the 
map) there are some wonderful achievements of engineer- 
ing, — tunnels that bore through the mountain-side in 
great circular loops. There is a special map (So. 7) which 
shows the exact curves of the line. Consult that map, 
and remember that the continuous lines mean track above 
ground, dotted lines, track in tunnels, and you can 
readily make out the progression of the road. Begin- 
ning at the Giornico station, the track bends to the right 
and plunges into the side of the mountain. Inside the 
hill it rises higher and higher, and at the same time curves 
around in the direction taken by the hands of a clock; and 
just before it reaches a point above where it entered the 
hill, it comes out again, running along the side of the hill 
for a short distance. Then it bores into the mountain 
again; again it works its way up, and at the same time 

147 



148 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

around like the hands of a clock. It comes out for breath 
and goes in again, boring up higher and higher toward 
the regions of the St. Gotthard. The lines in red with 
the number 45 show where we are to stand and what part 
of the road we are to see. 

45. Engineering Feats on the St. Gotthard Railroad,— 
Circular Tunnels at Giornico 

One is continually impressed, here in Switzerland, by 
the engineering skill of the age we live in. Do you recog- 
nize the direction of the road after studying the special 
map? The railroad station is at our left. The track 
curving around just before us is entering the Travi Tun- 
nel, boring upward and around at the same time. As it 
completes its spiral coil it comes out away up there higher 
on the mountain side, where you see the railroad train 
bound for Lucerne. A few rods farther to the left that 
train will plunge into the second tunnel, as shown on 
the little map, proceeding in the same way, rising and 
boring higher and higher like a spiral staircase through 
the heart of the hill. 

Just think how the whole face of the world has changed 
since the barbaric hordes from the north came pouring 
down over these mountains to ravage Italy and stamp on 
the ruins of the old Eoman Empire! A scheme like this 
tunnel would have been to those sturdy old fighters as in- 
comprehensible and fantastic as discussions of the "fourth- 
dimension " seem to us to-day. 

Go back to our general map yet again and trace the 
black line of the railroad northwestward from Giornico; 



CIRCULAE TUNNELS AT GIORNICO 



149 



you come in a few miles to the famous St. Gotthard Tun- 
nel, one of the marvels of all modern railroad construc- 
tion. It is over nine miles long, through the mountain, 
and it took nine years to complete the work. Work was 
begun simultaneously at the north and south sides. 
Power from the Tessin and Beuss rivers was used to com- 
press air into one-twentieth of its normal volume, and this 
compressed air supplied force for borers, preparing holes 
for charges of dynamite. 

A few miles still farther, beyond the northerly end of the 
great St. Gotthard Tunnel, you see the station of Wasen. 
There again there are more looped and coiled tunnels, 
somewhat similar to those we have just seen at Giornico, 
but curiously zigzag in their relative location. Special 
Map No. 8 gives the topographical details. Notice that 
this map is so printed that north is toward the right. The 
track is here descending from the St. Gotthard at the 
south, and coming gradually down northward toward Lake 
Lucerne. You can see by the map that the track runs 
some distance past Wasen, on a higher level, drops into 
the Leggistein Tunnel and moves down in an oblique coil, 
coming out of the tunnel and back toward Wasen. At 
Wasen station a north-bound train would be found head- 
ing due south! Leaving Wasen again, the track still runs 
south till it reaches the Wattinger Tunnel, another down- 
ward slanting loop, from which it emerges to run about 
north-northeast toward Fliielen, indulging in one more 
sweep underground before it decides to keep to the day- 
light. 



150 SWITZEELAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

4:6. St. Gotthard Railroad at Wasen, north side of 
Alps ; Windgalle in distance 

Here is a bit of the very road, contradictory enough in 
its movements to drive a compass distracted. We are 
looking north from a point near the station (see location 
46 on the special map No. 8), but on the track at our left 
a train going in the direction in which we face would be 
bound, not for Lucerne, but for Milan! The stretch of 
track which we see at our left is at the lower end of the 
Leggistein tunnel. 

The Windgalle is that sharply pyramidal peak in the 
distance to the right. If we were on its summit we could 
easily look down on Lake Lucerne., for those blue waters 
lie in their queerly crooked hollow that we remember, just 
beyond the mountains which cut off our northern view. 
Don't you recall just how it looks over beyond those 
mountains, — just how we saw the Uri-Rothstock towering 
opposite Sisikon (Stereograph 14) and how we looked 
down on the lake from the dizzy shelf of the Axenstrasse 
(Stereograph 15) and how we gazed from the Axenstein 
between the ranks of mountains over to where Pilatus, 
with his romantic peaks, stood on the western side 
(Stereograph 13)? Those were beautiful outlooks over 
Lucerne! 

Now we are to move westward and see the southern 
side of the Bernese Alps. 



THE BERNESE ALPS; SOUTHERN SIDE 

The St. Gotthard region is the height of land dividing 
the waters of the Rhine system from those of the Rhone. 
Find the St. Gotthard tunnel once more on the general 
map. Just to the west (inside the limits of the district 
marked out as the Bernese Alps, and shown on a special 
map), you see indicated the Furka Pass, an old road 
over the mountain shoulder, leading from the Rhine 
valley over to the Rhone. The special map of the Ber- 
nese Alps, Map No. 5, shows more details of the neigh- 
borhood. Find, again, the Rhone valley in the lower 
right-hand portion of this map. At the head of the val- 
ley, near the map margin, is the Furka Pass. The crook- 
edness of the road on the Rhone side of the pass easily 
shows how steep the ascent must be. We are now about to 
study the mountains on the southern side of the Bernese 
range, as we promised to do when we were on the north 
side toward Interlaken. Note the numbers 47-48 in red 
near the Furka Pass, with a zigzag line running to a point 
on the road from which four red lines branch toward the 
west and southwest. We are to look out first over the 
territory between the upper line and the second one from 
it, each having the number 47 at its end. This, evidently, 

151 



152 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



will be an outlook over the walls of the Rhone valley, to- 
ward the Oberaarhorn with its great glacier. Perhaps 
we can make out the Finsteraarhorn, too, where it stands 
farther over to the west. 



47. Grimsel Pass, Oberaarhorn and Finsteraarhorn 9 
west from the Furka Pass 

There was a path over this very pass in the old Roman 
days, but it was not until after the advent of missionary 
enterprise that anything like a permanent inn was built 
for the shelter of travellers. The mountains were as 
grand as they are now, but they are cheerless neighbors 
on a stormy night. The old monks were very practical 
Christians when they came here to act as pathfinders, en- 
gineers and guides for the body as well as for the soul! 

It is like standing on a high shelf, looking down to the 
world's floor and across to another shelf beyond the low- 
lands. You recognize the Oberaarhorn yonder, with the 
glacier basin beside it, and the Finsteraarhorn peering 
over the glacier from the western side? The Jungfrau is 
still further away in the direction in which we are look- 
ing, beyond the Finsteraarhorn. At the left of the 
Finsteraarhorn is the Rothhorn, with the Fiescher and 
Miinster glaciers for companions, and away out at the 
right, as far as we can see, we catch a glimpse of one of 
the spurs of the Lauteraarhorn. 

The crooked road over yonder, flattening itself against 



THE VIEW EEOM THE FUBKA PASS 



153 



the mountain-side, leads from the Grimsel Pass. (See 
the road as marked on the map.) They say the Grimsel 
region used, long ago, to be fertile and smiling with woods 
and pastures, but the Wandering Jew once plodded 
drearily up over that road and desolation came following 
on his heels. Certainly " the bricks are alive to this 
day " to testify to it, for the Pass is in a region where the 
face of the earth looks hard and forbidding enough. Just 
now, when the road is lighted by noonday sunshine, its 
severity is softened just a little; but fancy travelling up 
over those toilsome windings when the snow is twenty- 
five feet deep and one has to turn out every now and then 
for a mass of rocks and ice brought down by an avalanche 
a few days before! Some of those oblique scratches on 
the mountain slopes this side of the road are really huge 
gullies torn out by avalanches in other years. 

When we hear of a village overwhelmed by the descent 
of a mass of snow or rocks and earth, it always seems like 
a calamity coming from heaven with a special intention 
of punishment or discipline; but when we see how these 
slopes lie, we realize that the terror-bringing avalanches 
are only magnified forms of such happenings as are com- 
monplace in our own home experience. The loosening 
and falling of gravel from the upper end of a bank beside 
a road or a railroad track, — that is an earth avalanche on 
a small scale. The sliding of snow from a piazza roof as 
it thaws on a sunny, clearing-off morning, — that is an in- 
fant snow avalanche. It is all a question of relative pro- 
portions. Here we are to the mountain heights what 



154 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

ants and crickets are to the height of our own south 
piazza! 

On the road up here the snow-drifts linger till June, 
melting away gradually under the warmer skies and send- 
ing their waters down into that valley to add to the 
Ehone. Beyond the Grimsel Pass, after that road begins 
to go down hill on the other side of the mountain yonder, 
the melting snows drain off into the Aare. The famous 
gorge of the Aare which we saw near Meiringen, is less 
than twenty miles from here in an air line. Over behind 
us the Eeuss begins and carries its own share of waters 
down to Lake Lucerne. Off at our left there are slopes 
that feed streams running down to Lake Maggiore and 
on through the loveliest part of northern Italy. " Three 
drops of rain, delivered from one drifting cloud, might 
fall into the Ehone, the Toccia and the Ehine, and, after 
filtering through Lake Leman, Lake Maggiore and Lake 
Constance, might run forward on their several ways, into 
the sea, past Avignon, Cremona and Cologne." * 

Streams of water run fast; streams of ice move slowly. 
But it was over on that glacier that we see at the extreme 
right, this side of the Oberaarhorn, that Agassiz and Hugi 
made the first systematic measurements of glacier move- 
ment. In 1827 record was made of the exact location of 
a certain hut on the ice, with reference to fixed spots on 
the mountain walls. Nine years later, — in 1836, — the 
hut showed that it had been carried along 2,184 feet. 



* W. H. Dixon, The Switzers. 



HOW GLACIER MOTION IS MEASURED 155 



Three years later it had moved even farther, making 
2,216 feet the extent of its journey. In 1840 it had ad- 
vanced still another hundred feet. In 1884 the hut had 
travelled a mile and three-quarters since the date of the 
first measurement. The yearly average between 1827 and 
1884 was a little over 220 feet. They say the Mer de 
Glace, over near Mont Blanc, moves even faster, — at the 
rate of almost two feet daily. 

Let us consult that indispensable map again. We 
found before that there were four lines branching from 
the Furka Pass toward the west and southwest. Now we 
are to look over the country lying between the lower line 
and the second line from it, each having the number 48 
at its end on the lower map margin. It is evident that 
we are to look beyond the territory shown on this map, 
No. 5. If we look at the general map of Switzerland 
again, Map No. 1, we find these two lines from the Furka 
Pass extend fully fifty miles toward the southwest to the 
great Monte Rosa group. We are then to turn around 
to the left, on the very spot where we have been standing, 
and look straight down the long valley of the Rhone, and 
beyond a full third of the distance across the whole 
country. 

48. Magnificent View of Rhone Valley with Weiss-l 
horn and the Monte Rosa Group fifty miles away " 

The Weisshorn, or white peak, explains its own name by 
standing up there on the horizon in the centre of our 
range of vision like a huge temple-roof above the hazy 



156 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

vista of the Ehone valley. It signals to us across all the 
intervening country, calling us to come. And we shall go! 
That valley under the shadow of the Weisshorn, — Switzer- 
land would not be Switzerland without it. The Matter- 
horn is just south from the Weisshorn though we cannot 
make it out clearly at this distance, in this light. It is the 
snowy hood of the Weisshorn that reflects the sunshine 
and makes it stand out so conspicuously; the rocky steeple 
of the Matterhorn you know is slender and bare. The 
huge ridge of the Monte Eosa range, gleaming white like 
the Weisshorn, shows up strongly against the sky more to 
our left. The Dom and the Taschhorn are seen just over 
our guide's head, with other peaks nearer Monte Eosa ex- 
tending toward the south. We shall by and by be looking 
straight into the face of Monte Eosa from cliffs only six 
miles away. 

It is still now up here on the Pass, but if this guide 
would fire his gun or blow the horn that hangs from his 
shoulder, we should hear the mountains calling to each 
other, back and forth, down the valley. 

" Blow, bugle, blow ! Set the wild echoes flying ; 
And answer, echoes, answer, — dying, — dying, — dying." 

There is a wonderful sense of uplift and exhilaration 
that comes with looking far, far away from heights like 
this. Are there anywhere dingy, commonplace, crowded 
towns with their earth trodden into dust and mud, their 
air full of smoke and smells, — or did we dream it all? This 
is the real world. No matter if the other is true, too. 
This is a glimpse of Nature's strong, sincere face, with 



SOUTH WESTWARD FROM THE FURKA PASS 157 

stern lines and kindly sunshine making one friendly 
whole. We may be as interested as we please in the scien- 
tific interpretation of Nature's processes. We may know 
all about the formation of glaciers and the erosion of 
river valleys and the meteorological genesis of the storm- 
winds, but, after all, modern science merely translates the 
mystery of this world into a new formula, a fresh re-state- 
ment of its own. It cannot explain. What does that 
long hazy perspective of the valley mean by leading our 
eyes away toward the far horizon? What does the Weiss- 
horn mean by holding up that gleaming pyramid of white 
against the sky? We are like children, surrounded by 
people talking with words we cannot understand. Shall 
we ever "grow up" far enough to understand? 

The little, material facts of the scene we can set in 
order in our minds. Let us see, yes, — down there is the 
other end of the irregularly Y-shaped road that runs down 
the valley from one side, across and up on the other side. 
Those very crooks and turns in the steep highway are set 
down on the map, as we shall find if we compare the two. 

Here on the upper road, — one of the highest roads' in all 
Europe, — the snow lies until mid-summer; and yet the 
spring winds that come blowing up this valley from the 
Mediterranean, — the Fohn winds, — have a heat almost 
tropic in its fierceness. They dread the force of those hot 
south winds. More than one terrible f orest fire has been 
fanned into a rage by its cruel draught, and only a few 
years ago a whole village, a few miles beyond that moun- 
tain at our left, was burned to the ground in a few hours 



158 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



by the spread of one innocent bit of flame when the south 
wind was blowing. That was especially hard on the peo- 
ple of Obergestelen (hardly five miles below us as the map 
shows), for time after time parts of the same village had 
been crushed by avalanches from those mountains at the 
right. One single avalanche had killed eighty-four of the 
village folk. Yet Obergestelen rose from both ruins and 
ashes, and this last time it has been chiefly built of stone. 
Farther still down the valley there is a little town 
(Minister) where books were printed by the monks away 
back in the fifteenth century, — books that would be worth 
now many times their weight in gold if one could find a 
stray copy among his grandfathers treasures. The old 
Eomans and the early monks seem to be responsible for 
most of the solid beginnings of civilized life here in Swit- 
zerland. 

Away up here, on this road over the pass, that queer bit 
of arctic vegetation that they call " red snow " has occa- 
sionally been seen. It is nearly eight thousand feet above 
the sea-level and there are only about three months in the 
year when winter takes a vacation; no wonder that some 
special characteristics of polar lands should crop out here 
and there. The peasants hereabouts used to speak of the 
red spots with hushed voices. They said they were drops 
of wine spilled from casks carried over this old road years 
and years and years before, and that the forlorn souls of 
muleteers who had died in sin came back to travel the old 
road seeking these ghostly drops to quench their endless, 
tormenting thirst. 



AIRY DISTANCE ACROSS THE VALLEY 



159 



There are no ghosts here now. The forenoon sun is 
shining frankly and cheerfully on the stones that the bad 
old mule-drivers used to tread. Let us hope the poor souls 
have earned rest at last. Maybe the mules too, — more 
sinned against than sinning, — are turned out to pasture in 
some suburbs of the Happy Hunting Grounds! 

Forward now, down the valley. We shall follow where 
those gleaming summits invite. Just beyond those snow- 
covered summits on the right the Eggishorn stands, north- 
east of the Weisshorn and the Monte Eosa range. It is a 
mountain that stands up by itself and offers fine views 
from its summit in several directions. We shall first have 
a magnificent panorama from the Eggishorn across the 
valley of the Ehone toward the southern peaks of the 
Alps. You will find our standpoint and part of our field 
of vision on the map of the Bernese Alps, Map No. 5, a 
little north of the middle of its southern limits. Here 
again we shall have to turn to the general map of Switzer- 
land to see the full length of the red lines which extend 
to the Fletschhorn twenty miles away. 

49, Looking south from the Eggishorn over Hhone 
Valley to Monte Leone and Fletschhorn 

Here we have a very interesting example of the service 
that is done by stereographs. Look first at this stereo- 
graph, No. 49, holding the card in your hand like an ordin- 
ary photograph. It is an attractive picture with the rocks 
and dark cliffs in the foreground, the distant mountains 
growing more and more pale and hazy as their distance 



160 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

increases; but, after all, it is difficult to realize that one 
thing does stand out very far beyond another thing. Now 
look at the same stereograph through your stereoscope. 
Does it not give you a great surprise? This lichen-coated 
ledge of rock, almost within reach of our hands, had seemed 
as if it might be a part of that dark slope beyond; whereas 
now it is quite plain that the mountain with the sunny 
blanket across its back is a long distance beyond, and we 
can actually feel the great, hazy hollow that lies between 
the nearer mountain and those at the other side of the 
Ehone Valley. Away down in the bottom of that valley 
the Ehone is flowing toward the southeast (the right) on 
its way to the Mediterranean Sea. It is the Fletschhorn 
which stands so high, straight before us across the river 
valley. Monte Eosa, the highest peak in -all this part of 
Switzerland, is beyond the Fletschhorn and actually con- 
siderably higher, though it cannot be clearly seen from 
here. Monte Leone stands a little to the right of the 
limits of our vision. 

It is no wonder that the Alps are the despair of land- 
scape painters, for it would be practically an impossible 
task to try to represent on canvas the marvellous variations 
of dark and light, the wonderful transparency of the filmy 
haze that fills these valleys and wraps the surrounding 
peaks. It almost seems as if that sunshiny haze must 
drift and change while we look on. 

Let us turn about, and, from a point some distance be- 
hind us and to the left (that is, farther to the northeast), 
see one of the most striking glacier landscapes in all Swit- 



OVERLOOKING THE FIESCHER GLACIER 



161 



zerland. Our point of view is marked 50 on the same 
map to which we have been referring, Map No. 5; you un- 
derstand from the map that we shall be looking a little 
east of north, the Fiescher glacier occupying a good deal 
of the space nearest us. The map shows that a row of 
mountain heights must evidently stand along the eastern 
side of this glacier, with others at the left, giving it the 
character of a stream of ice. 

50. Fiescher Glacier and Oberaarhom, northeast 
from the Eggishom 

Here we see the genuine river effect of one of these 
mighty ice-streams. The shape of the ice really suggests 
quite strongly the shape of part of Lake Lucerne as we 
saw it from the Axenstein (Stereograph 13), except that 
the lake surface seemed level, while this is a decided de- 
scent. The width of the glacier for most of the distance 
here just above us averages about half a mile, although 
we should say at first glance the distance was nowhere 
near so great as that. We still have to remind ourselves, 
by reference to the scale of maps and by comparison with 
other experiences, how great dimensions and distances are 
in this land of high altitudes. The mountains that wall 
in the glacier on the right are those of which we were 
forewarned by the map when we consulted it. We can 
see very plainly from here how moraines or ridges of 
debris gather on the surface of a glacier and along its 
sides. See what a distinct marking or stripe of dark color 
this glacier shows all along its crooked course under the 
afternoon shadows of the mountains. This Fiescher gla- 



162 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

cier ends a little below us out here at our right and its ice 
masses, as they gradually melt, are carried off down a 
mountain stream into the Rhone. It is the blue Mediter- 
ranean that is the gainer from these accumulations of 
mountain storms, for, as we remember from what we saw 
at the Furka Pass (Stereographs 48 and 49), we have now 
passed the height of land dividing the Ehine valley from 
that of the Ehone, and all through the region where we 
are now the destiny of the raindrops and snow-banks is 
to help fill the basin of the Mediterranean. 

See how full of flowers the grass is here at our feet! 
That is again one of the most beautiful and surprising 
things about these Swiss highlands, — the way in which 
flowers grow so near to the everlasting ice and snow. In- 
deed, we sometimes find them growing actually within a 
few inches of an eternal snow-bank. 

One needs a steady head to stand, as this guide does, on 
the very brink of the cliff; but, after all, this cliff here is 
a very simple matter compared with some which we shall 
see later. The guide probably thinks it mere child's 
play! All the same, he will be quite willing to have his 
steady nerves and cool courage given due appreciation; 
and a record of our experience with him and an estimate 
of his ability as a guide will be very gladly received for 
his personal collection of recommendations. Bach pro- 
fessional guide here in Switzerland keeps books corre- 
sponding to the travellers' books in the hotels, where his 
patrons write whatever they think best in regard to his 
qualifications. 



THE ALETSCH GLACIER 



163 



There is still another famous glacier lying off at our 
left. If we change our standpoint again, going a mile 
across the hills toward the west, we can look down on the 
great Aletsch glacier and Marjelen Lake. (See 51 and its 
lines on Map No. 5.) 

51. The Great Aletsch Glacier and Marjelen Lake, 
west f rom the Eggishom 

If we did not know how deceptive distances are here, 
we might take this for a stream half a mile wide with a 
little pond at one side where the ice has broken away. 
As a matter of fact, it is a good mile and a half across 
to the Olmenhorn, which stands up there so black against 
the sky, and that icy shore of the Marjelen Sea is bounded 
by cliffs of considerable height. We will go down and 
see them nearer by and by. The Aletschhorn, just be- 
yond the Olmenhorn (we can only see a little of the north- 
eastern slope), has been the scene of a good many exciting 
adventures among mountaineers. Travellers going up 
the farther side of the Aletschhorn have had to crawl on 
hands and feet over bridges of ice only eighteen inches 
wide when chasms thousands of feet in width were wait- 
ing for them on both sides. Englishmen have a reputa- 
tion here in Switzerland for being the most cool-headed 
and courageous of climbers in places of that sort. There 
are places on this Aletschhorn where the only way in 
which to descend is to face inwards toward the rocks and 
ice, as if one were going down a ladder; the decline is so 
steep it is impossible to make the descent in any other 
way. , . a 



164: SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

The Dreieckhorn, just beyond the Olmenhorn, with its 
three distinct ridges separated by banks of ice and snow, 
is one of the most picturesque peaks hereabouts, though 
its actual height is not nearly as great as that of some of 
its neighbors. It stands only 9,810 feet above the sea 
level, while the Olmenhorn has a record of nearly eleven 
thousand feet (10,886), and the Aletschhorn itself carries 
its summit up to 13,776 feet. 

Now to go down to the shore of that lake and see what 
the glacier really looks like on nearer acquaintance. 

52. Edge of Aletsch Glacier 9 showing the treacherous 
Crevasses— and Marjelen Lake (looking west) 

Here we can see something of the interior of the cre- 
vasses on the edge of the glacier. How far down these 
cracks extend it is very difficult to guess, but it is likely 
to be several hundred feet. Portions of the glacier are 
continually breaking away and forming icebergs in the 
lake. Just imagine what the strength of a huge mass 
like this must be when it is pushed steadily downwards 
and downwards, onwards and onwards, through a moun- 
tain valley! No wonder the cliffs on either side are worn 
and torn, that boulders have their edges broken off, their 
sides scratched and ragged, and that they themselves are 
found centuries afterwards a long way from the parent 
cliffs. In some parts of our own country geologists show 
us just what they say are the traces of glacial action, deep 
furrows in the ledges and rocks belonging to formations 
entirely different from those in their neighborhood; but 



THE ALETSCH GLACIER 



165 



without a sight of glaciers themselves it is always difficult 
to imagine the agency which brought about such effects. 

If we go out upon the surface of the glacier and look a 
trifle west of south we shall see a broad expanse of ice- 
fields. Our point of view is marked 53 on the map. If 
you notice the length of the radiating lines and consider 
the scale of the map you will see that we shall be looking 
a distance of fully four miles to the south across the ice 
alone. 

53. An Ocean of Ice, Great Aletsch Glacier {looking 
south), with Weisshom in the distance to the right 

It looks quite innocent; it seems as if it might be as 
safe to cross this white expanse as it would be to cross 
any river well frozen over, but we know something of the 
possibilities of a surface like this. Eemembering those 
crevasses that we saw on the shore of Marjelen Lake 
(Stereograph 52), and the great ice-chasms which we saw 
on the Unter Grindelwald Glacier (Stereograph 32), we 
can realize that even here there is need of a skillful guide 
and a well-provided equipment of ropes, alpenstocks and 
axes. Those who spend a good deal of time in this neigh- 
borhood become so accustomed to little accidents in a 
place like this that they really make but slight account 
of falling into a crevasse now and then and being pulled 
out by guides at the ends of a rope; but until one does 
become used to such an experience, it must have striking 
terrors. 

Once in a while farmers in these mountain districts, 



166 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

driving cattle from one pasture to another, meet with 
serious loss by having an awkward cow slip into one of 
these ice-gulfs, for it is of course very hard to rescue a 
frightened animal under such circumstances. 

Again we see the Weisshorn lifting its white head above 
the dark cliff on the right. 



ZEEMATT 



Once more let us look at the general map, No. 1, and 
get our bearings with regard to the whole country. We 
are to proceed now southwest, down towards Zermatt 
and the Matterhorn, and on the way we shall pause in 
the valley of the Visp to look back northward toward 
the Aletschhorn and other peaks in the Bernese Oberland. 
The district of the Visp valley (a part of the canton of 
Valais) lies just south of the western part of the Bernese 
Oberland. You will see by consulting the general map 
that the Rhone, whose valley we overlooked from the 
Furka Pass (Stereograph 48), runs nearly west between 
the Oberland region and the Visp valley. The Visp 
river runs almost north and flows into the Rhone. What 
we shall do now is to follow up the Visp valley as far as 
the little town of Stalden and look back north. ISTow 
turn to the map of Zermatt and the Monte Rosa group, 
Map No. 9, giving on a larger scale the territory included 
in the rectangle surrounding the Visp valley on the gen- 
eral map, and we can see the geographical features of 
the region in more detail. 

Map No. 9 shows us very plainly the point where we are 
to stand next by the apex of the lines marked 54. It is 
near the northern limits of the map. The river and the 

167 



168 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

railway, as we can see, will be near us, the distance being 
taken tip by mountains. 

54, Looking down (north) the Visp Valley near 
Stalden. Bernese Alps in distance 

How suggestive of spring freshets that bridge is, with 
its arch so enormously high in proportion to the present 
height of the river! It is easy to believe that when the 
snows are melting in the spring all these mountain streams 
must be tremendously increased in bulk and in force. 
The weight of waters rushing down to the Ehone would 
destroy any but a very well constructed bridge. As a 
matter of fact, this one was built with great engineering 
skill, its foundations being specially constructed and 
braced so as to receive the force of the rushing water 
without being disturbed or undermined. This little rail- 
way runs from Visp up to Zermatt (behind us). The con- 
struction of roads like this through the mountain regions 
of Switzerland has been one of the most effective means 
for securing the prosperity of the country. Travellers 
came here in large numbers before any railroads were 
built at all, that is, in large numbers considering how few 
people in those days travelled at all. Now the visitors to 
Zermatt number thousands where they used to number 
hundreds or perhaps scores, and that means prosperity for 
a steadily increasing number of people connected with the 
hotels, for the small farmers and a whole army of others 
whose livelihood depends directly or indirectly on summer 



COUNTRY FOLK AT STALDEN 



169 



travel. The Swiss people are not afraid to work. Even 
when they are as old as this peasant grandmother, they 
keep up the daily performance of a large share in all sorts 
of heavy duties. See, this old woman is actually doing 
two kinds of work at once. She is carrying home a bas- 
ket of gleanings from the hay-field, and at the same time 
takes her knitting to improve the shining hour while 
she walks along or while she waits upon the movement of 
some other worker. Probably she herself made the 
smaller basket that she carries on her wrist. 

They say that this whole valley was once the bed of a 
glacier. If that be so, this earth at our feet must be chiefly 
the result of the glacier's work, grinding up the rocks that 
it broke from the mountain-sides. Year after year and cen- 
tury after century, indeed, age after age, fragments from 
the mountains have been brought down by avalanches and 
have added their several contributions to the remains left 
behind by the glacier. Lichens helped digest the rock frag- 
ments, and other forms of vegetation followed the lichens. 
Generation after generation of vegetable growth has flour- 
ished and died leaving rich mould behind it, and this 
mould, mixed with the original gravel, gives the Swiss 
farmer and his sons the field which they till. It is a 
story even longer than the one we used to hear when we 
were children, about the baking of our bread for the 
breakfast-table. 

The mountains away beyond the end of the valley are 
members of the Bernese range; some of them we have 
seen before from other standpoints. Just over the old 



170 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

woman's head, do you see a wooden chalet standing out 
dark against the mountains? And just over its gable do 
you see a gleaming white pyramid? That is the Breit- 
horn. We saw it before from the Wengern Alp (Stereo- 
graph 28). Then we saw it from the northeast; now we 
see it from the south. 

Of course you know we are looking directly across the 
Ehone valley in looking at those distant mountains. The 
famous river is not more than five miles from us at the 
foot of those hazy slopes, flowing from east to west. 

It takes two hours to go from here up to Zermatt, al- 
though it is only about sixteen or eighteen miles. The 
journey for a large part of the way is a steep slope, and 
locomotive and cars have cog-wheels like those on the 
other mountain railways. This valley is practically the 
only road to Zermatt and back again, unless one takes 
dangerous paths over the glaciers at the southwest of the 
village. It is now not far from noon, and the next train 
leaves here at 1.26, reaching Zermatt at 3.25. 

The town of Zermatt appears on Map No. 9, near the 
head of the river valley. Everybody who comes here has, 
of course, in mind, the famous Matterhorn, and is eager 
to get his first glimpse of the romantic peak. Our own 
first glimpse will be from the northeast, from the apex of 
the red lines marked 55 on the map, and which extend 
towards the southwest. We shall see only a short dis- 
tance to the right; you notice that the line on that 
side stops quite short on a hill above the village; but to- 
wards the left, and straight ahead, the map promises that 



A FIBST GLIMPSE OF THE MATTEEHORN 



171 



we shall be able to see at least four miles to where the 
mountain stands on the border line of Italy. 

We know how the Matterhorn looks in pictures, but 
some of us have hazy ideas about how it stands, what the 
country is over which it reigns. Map No. 9 shows that 
it is at the southern head of the Visp valley, a trough 
between the mountains some twenty-five miles long. The 
coloring of the map shows that all the way up the valley 
the mountains are more or less covered by snow, and that 
great glaciers lie over their shoulders and in their laps, 
draining into the Visp and sending contributions down 
to the Ehone. Look at the figures on Map jSTo. 9 show- 
ing the height of land on various elevations here and 
there; — nine, ten, eleven, twelve thousand feet. The val- 
ley itself must be a mere crevasse between them. Trace 
it farther and farther south, and you find the village of 
Zermatt almost at the head of the valley; and at the very 
head. . . . Look now and see! 



55. The "Alpine Spirit's" Sanctuary —the Charming 
Zermatt and the Matterhorn 

That topmost peak is two miles above our heads in the 
clear, cold silence of the sky. There are greater heights 
in Switzerland, but not one with just the same sinister 
fascination. For centuries the peasants believed that it 
was the home of demons. Their imagination saw sullen 
evil in its very shape and threatening in its very attitude. 
It was evident, so they believed, that no one could ever 



172 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

climb to the top, even if he dared attempt such a thing, 
for anybody could see that the precipices are sometimes 
vertical, sometimes fairly overhanging. The demons had 
made their aerial city unassailable. Zermatt is only a 
village now (most of the houses are farther to our right 
than we can see); a hundred years ago its handful of in- 
habitants away up here at the end of the valley were so 
cut off from the rest of the world that they kept their 
superstitions unchanged from generation to generation. 
What a strange life it must have been, shut in here be- 
tween frowning walls with this giant Matterhorn for- 
ever standing over them, vast and grim and still. To-day 
it is different; the Matterhorn is practically the same, but 
we see it through a different mental atmosphere. It is a 
piece of Nature's dramatic poetry which we have learned 
to read after a fashion. Its terrors are not all passed 
away. It is responsible for so many graves in the village 
churchyard here in Zermatt that nobody can take the Mat- 
terhorn lightly; but its dangers are real, honest dangers. 
The demons, at least, have fled. 

Look at the map again and see how the land lies be- 
tween us and the Matterhorn. This huge slope at our 
right is the TJnter-Gabelhorn, and just beyond it lies the 
Z'Mutt valley. We can see where the valley opens be- 
tween the Gabelhorn and the Galen beyond. At the left, 
just over the head of this woman nearby, you can see on 
the upper ridge of the Galen two special elevations; one 
a low, rounding dome, the other a sharp peak. We shall 
go up presently to that little dome-shaped height by the 



A FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE MATTERHORN 173 



Schwarzsee and look both ways, off by the Hornli (the 
sharp point), towards the Matterhorn, and back in this 
direction down to these fields and houses in the Visp 
valley. 

We are looking southwest. Beyond the Matterhorn are 
the cities of Aosta and Turin, in Italy. The Italian 
peninsula stretches off sharply to our left, toward the 
southeast. 

Life is easier here in Zermatt now than it used to 
be in old times, for summer visitors leave a good deal of 
money behind them every year. All the same, it is a hard 
struggle for many of the peasants to make both ends 
meet. Ask this woman, who has had to cut the grass in 
some poor corner of her little pasture. Twice or three 
times during the short summer the scanty crop is gath- 
ered, for nothing can be allowed to go to waste. The 
winter is so long and so cold, and the cows are the only 
dependence of the family. 

Once more it is appalling to the imagination to think 
how many long ages it has taken to prepare these poor 
little fields with their grass crops. It is the old story 
over again; all these mountains were once grim, bare rock, 
like the head of the Matterhorn. Storms and frost, ava- 
lanches and glaciers and foaming rivers have torn the face 
of the cliffs; lichens dissolved their surface and died to 
make soil in which other plants might thrive. Those 
plants died making mould in which still others might live 
and grow. The river dwindled and narrowed, leaving its 
bed full of crumbling gravel to feed the increasing armies 



174 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

of young vegetation. Now the river fills only a narrow 
space in the valley, and here are the little fields where 
grass grows to feed the cattle, and the cattle feed these 
men and women whom we see walking about so uncon- 
cernedly. A long history it is, and the Matterhorn yon- 
der has seen it all from the very beginning. 

Wherever we go about here, that sternly insistent peak 
still stands over us, inviting and warning and pointing. 
It always seems to have some mysterious significance 
which we do not quite grasp. See how it is when we look 
from a pathway up on the steep side hill yonder, just 
above the village (see lines connected with the number 
56 on our map). 

56. From Verdure to Eternal Snow— -Matterhorn 
from the Pathway above Zermatt 

Five miles away that summit stands, over beyond the 
Z'Mutt and the Hornli. As we climb, that crest seems to 
climb too, always keeping far ahead of us. 

Just see what magnificent strength and beauty there 
are in the very lines of things as we see them now. The 
stiff, oblique contour of the hill that mounts toward the 
right has a definite character of its own; vigorous, decided, 
abrupt. Just compare it in memory with the dull level 
of a marsh or the sleepy line of the ocean on a sunny day. 
Then beyond that rough, energetic slant of line is the 
heavy rounding line of the Galen over across the valley 
as strong and as decided in its own way and its opposite 
direction. Between the two we have the dominant 



THE PEAK OF THE MATTERHOKN 



175 



line of all, the axis of that sharp pyramid that rises into 
the sky with masterly decision. See how the very trees 
seem to respond to its call and take on its aspiring verti- 
cal. The beauty of these lines is so majestic, so severe, 
that by contrast we appreciate all the more the bit of 
graceful prettiness which we find in the elusive curve of 
this wood-path. 

See how the darkness of these pines sets off the cold 
whiteness of the cliffs up there against the sky:; and, again, 
do linger for just a moment to enjoy the delicate tracery 
of the tree shadows on the path at our feet. 

We shall wish to come back here more than once, and 
the mountains will wait for us; but now we are to move 
on, climbing still higher to the Schwarzsee on that dark 
height at our left. From the Schwarzsee we can look 
directly across (southwest) to the bare ridges that have 
tempted so many climbers to their death. See the lines 
marked 57 on the map. 

57* The Matterhom seen from the Schwarzsee 

Though we have seen the mountain outlines so many 
times, they always impress us as being exaggerated and 
incredible. How can any real mountain be so steep? 
We are now looking southwest from the dome-shaped cap 
of the Galen, which we saw from the village of Zermatt 
(Stereograph 55). The Hornli is at our right between us 
and the mountain. This is the Furggen glacier which 
lies off at the left (east) of the mountain. It drains into 
streams that run down into the Visp by Zermatt, and so, 



176 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

in fact, does the Matterhorn glacier over there beyond 
the Hornli. We can see a bit of its icy slopes now beyond 
the hill, but a ridge separates the two glaciers, sending 
their contributions down to the valley by different routes. 

There had been fourteen attempts to climb those fright- 
ful cliffs before success came, and the success itself was, 
you remember, marked by one of the most terrible acci- 
dents in all the records of Alpine climbing. Whymper, 
the English Alpinist, will be forever associated with the 
mountain in the minds of those who study the history of 
these regions, because of his indomitable will and pluck 
and perseverance in persisting in the attempt to do what 
seemed absolutely impossible. Again and again he tried. 
Again and again the mountain baffled him and sent him 
back, but he would never own that he was beaten; he 
merely gathered himself for a fresh attack. Eight separ- 
ate times he attempted the ascent and failed. Some of 
the excursions were made from Breuil, on the south or 
Italian side. He went part way up, to a high ridge sepa- 
rating two great chasms, and spent the night there in a 
little tent; it was so cold that a flask of water froze under 
his very pillow. Avalanches went tearing down beside 
him in the darkness of the night. On another occasion he 
was trying to climb up on the side farthest from here and, 
slipping in a dangerous place, he fell two hundred feet, 
stopping just in time to save himself from another fall, 
which would have taken him eight hundred feet to jagged 
rocks and ice below. He said afterwards that he really felt 
very little fear at the time of falling, and suffered prac- 



FIRST ASCENT OF THE MATTERHORN 



177 



tically very little pain at the moment of being wounded by 
rocks and ice ridges. The cold and the excitement 
together seemed to answer the purpose of an anaesthetic. 

One route after another proved impracticable. The 
cliffs on the north side (the side at our right) were not to 
be considered. A large part of the way up their outline 
is so precipitous that no foothold could possibly be main- 
tained. There are places on that north side where a stone 
would fall over fifteen hundred feet before touching any- 
thing at all. 

It was Whymper's ninth siege of the Matterhorn which 
gave him the victory. In July, 1865, he went up with three 
guides and three other English tourists. They left Zer- 
matt late in the afternoon, came up here to the Schwartz- 
see and passed along that narrow ridge straight ahead of 
us, — the ridge that runs like the ridgepole of a house, 
connecting the Hornli with the shoulder of the Matter- 
horn. In four hours they reached a spot on the ridge 
which is just opposite the point in the glacier where we 
can see something like a face with one eye closed. At 
that point the party slept in blanket bags until very early 
the next morning. Before light they were on their way, 
once more climbing this ridge of the mountain which ex- 
tends straight towards us. It proved to be not quite so 
bad in actual experience as it promised when viewed from 
a distance. For about three thousand feet it was like an 
enormous and very rough staircase. After climbing until 
late in the forenoon, they came to the bottom of that 
shaded portion we see near the summit. Then they bent 



178 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

around toward the north and attacked those cliffs which 
seem partly vertical and partly overhanging. An hour 
and a half it took to mount these cliffs. Every step had 
to be prepared with ice-axes and the men had to be drawn 
up one by one with ropes, in addition to their own efforts 
in climbing. There was great exhilaration in the task; it 
seemed to promise success almost from the start; besides, 
an Italian party was known to be on the way toward the 
summit, and there was a spirited rivalry between the 
Englishmen and the Italians. The party of southerners 
did not, as a matter of fact, succeed in reaching the sum- 
mit by their line of approach. They mounted some dis- 
tance but had to give up the attempt and return. While 
they were climbing they heard voices on the mountain and 
felt sure that the spirits of the old tradition were on 
guard! 

Imagine the feelings of the men who were first in the 
whole history of the world to stand on that height under 
a perfectly clear sky, seeing mountains one hundred miles 
away as distinctly as if the distance were only one-third 
as great. Zermatt, they said, looked like a little heap of 
sticks and boxes ten thousand feet below. The men 
left their names in a bottle on the top of the mountain, 
(that is the traditional method of leaving your visiting 
card on these Alpine heights), and after a little delay 
turned to come down and tell their tales of adventure to 
the friends waiting far below. It was a little way below 
the summit, over on the north side of the mountain, — that 
is on the right side as we see it from here, — that the 



FIRST TRAGEDY OF THE MATTERHORN 



179 



tragedy occurred which everybody about Zermatt remem- 
bers to this day. One of the Englishmen slipped; as he 
fell he knocked over a guide and pulled down after him 
the two other Englishmen. The rope connecting these 
four with Mr. Whymper and the two remaining guides 
held for a moment, then snapped, and the four men, 
unable to save themselves, slid down the precipice and fell 
to the Matterhorn glacier on the north side, four thousand 
feet below. The three men who were left alone on the 
cliff were so stricken with horror at this terrible ending 
for the day's adventure, that it was some time before they 
could pull themselves together and make the descent to 
Zermatt. On their way down, so the story is told by 
Whymper, clouds that had gathered over the mountain 
during their passage cleared away, and all at once a most 
remarkable rainbow was seen spanning one of the terrible 
gulfs between the cliffs, — a rainbow with a strange shadow 
over it like the form of an enormous Latin cross. It must 
have been a tremendously dramatic and impressive\ thing 
at just that moment when the nerves of all the men were 
at such high tension and their feelings so overwrought by 
the horror of seeing their friends swept to death before 
their very eyes. 

They never found all four of the bodies of the men who 
were killed. Three of the bodies were discovered on the 
glacier beyond the Hornli, and some fragments of clothing 
belonging to the other, but to this day no one knows 
where that man found his grave. 

Since 1865 there have been many other ascents (one 



180 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

by President Koosevelt), some without any eventful hap- 
penings and some involving other calamities; but there 
has never been so impressive a tragedy since the day when 
the Mattertiom's summit was first conquered. A Koman- 
Catholic priest has said mass on the very summit of the 
peak. There have been a few ascents by women during 
the last few years. Wire ropes and chains have been 
riveted to the rocks in some of the most dangerous places, 
and expert mountain-climbers say the ascent is really 
much less difficult at the present time than the ascent of 
mountains that have no such reputation for hardship and 
danger. 

The Matterhorn is, you remember, not the only famous 
height at the head of the Visp valley. The head of the 
valley indeed spreads out, the Visp being made up of a 
large number of smaller streams, and these streams are 
traceable to glaciers that spread out in all directions 
toward the south, southeast and east around Zermatt. 
Look at Map No. 9 once more and you will see how the 
glaciers come down toward the Visp valley, forming a 
grand semicircle around Zermatt. If we change our 
standpoint a little up here on the Schwartzsee, moving 
back a short distance toward the north, we can get a very 
interesting view of the range including the Breithorn (not 
the Breithorn we saw from Stalden, but another of the 
same name), Castor and Pollux and the Lyskamm, all 
lying on the line of the Italian frontier. On the map see 
the lines marked 58, extending toward the southeast. 



THE GEE AT GOENER GLACIER 



181 



58. Wonderful Frozen Cataract, the Gorner Glacier 
and Monte llosa Group 

Monte Kosa itself is not in sight from this point. That 
dome is a little farther to the east, that is, to our left. The 
dark, wooded mountain at our left, beyond the glacier, is 
the Eiffelberg, which we shall visit a little later. The 
snow-covered peak beyond it, as we stand here now, is the 
Lyskamm. The long, irregular ridge at the right, just 
above these pines, is the Breithorn, and between that and 
the Lyskamm we can see Pollux and some of the lesser 
heights. (Note the location of these mountains between 
our red lines on the map.) 

Here again is one of those enormous ice-rivers that 
fill the hollows between tremendous mountains. Re- 
membering that crevasse on the Unter Grindelwald Gla- 
cier, we can picture in our minds what some of those 
cracks before us would be if we went down nearer to get 
a truer impression of their size and extent. The waves 
and ridges look fantastic, but comparatively innocent, 
from here, though, as we very well know, they are likely 
to be anywhere from twenty to a hundred feet high, and 
the crevasses may be open hundreds and hundreds of feet 
down towards the real bottom of the valley. Sometimes 
these crevasses are hung with icicles thirty, forty, fifty 
feet long. 

The curious thing about this region is that in spite of 
the presence of so much ice the summer air is so warm. 
Crossing a glacier in August a man may often be very 



182 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



comfortable in his shirt-sleeves, although the ice for a mile 
around him may never have melted in the course of cen- 
turies. By the way, it was apropos of a Swiss journey, was 
it not, that Goldsmith wrote that since famous line about 
" winter lingering in the lap of May " ? 

As we stand here, Zermatt, down in the bottom of the 
Visp valley, is behind us and a little to our left. Let us 
turn about and take a look in the opposite direction down 
the valley which leads toward Stalden (Stereograph 54). 
Trace carefully the long lines numbered 59, which mark 
out the section we are to look over. 

59. Zermatt from the Schwartzsee 

When we looked up from the town down there by the 
Visp this height seemed not nearly so impressive as now. 
For some reason the distance as we look down seems much 
greater than it did before. Perhaps the reason why we 
underestimated the height when we looked up from the 
village was because the Matterhorn (behind us) stood still 
higher, and everything is dwarfed by that immense obelisk. 
We can trace the course of the river, as you see, quite a 
long distance down the valley. Those peaks that we see 
along the eastern side are all set down on the map between 
the radiating lines marked 59. The two highest ones at 
the right are the Taschhorn and the Dom. It was those 
very summits that we saw, you remember, when looking 
from the Furka Pass (Stereograph 48). We get here a 
very good idea of the wall of mountains which shut in the 
Visp valley on the east. Away over beyond those highest 



CLUB HUTS ON THE MOUNTAINS 



183 



sharp peaks at the east is another valley, the Saas-Fee, 
which we shall wish to see after we leave the Zermatt 
region. Practiced climbers cross from Zermatt to Saas- 
Fee over the shoulders of those peaks, but the passage 
is extremely dangerous and most travellers prefer to take 
the safe, if commonplace, little train down this valley, 
coming up again on the other side by an equally unpoetic 
conveyance. 

This hut with the stone-weighted roof is one of many 
such shelters erected on Alpine heights for the bene- 
fit of mountain-climbers, who come up thus far and 
spend the night ready for an early morning start. Al- 
pinists are not unanimous in their opinion that such a plan 
is wise. Some say that the gain in time is so great that 
the limited comforts of sleep in such a place are more than 
balanced. Others declare that it is a wiser thing to pre- 
face a hard climb with the most comfortable night's sleep 
that can be had in a good bed, with a proper breakfast on 
which to start out. Certainly there would be much more 
romance in climbing the Matterhorn if one stayed in a hut 
like this the night before, rising at two or three o' clock in 
the morning and climbing by starlight until sunrise. Just 
imagine what a sunrise would be when one had climbed 
perhaps two thousand feet higher than the spot where we 
are now, and could watch the first rays of light striking 
those sharp peaks which stand guard over the valley. How 
long it must be before the sun's rays reach the houses 
down in Zermatt! 

Eough as this hut is, its shelter would seem quite luxu- 



184 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

rious to many a mountain-climber who has bivouacked in a 
crevice between rocks or even in the lee of a big bank of 
ice and snow. They tell a story of how one member of a 
climbing party, staying over night in a hut of this same 
sort on another mountain, went out during the evening 
for a little observation of his own, leaving the others in 
the hut. They heard strange rumblings, stones fell down 
the rough chimney and other queer things happened, so 
they started out to see what might be the matter. They 
found that their friend in the darkness had missed the 
door of the hut and climbed upon the roof, not recogniz- 
ing it as anything more than a heap of stones, and he was 
poking about with his alpenstock in order to make sure of 
a secure foothold. 

When mountain-climbers spend the night in a little 
hut of this sort where there is no host, and where 
nothing more than shelter is provided, it is of course 
customary to carry food and also fuel to the amount 
that may be needed for preparing meals. There is 
usually some little provision for comfort in the way of 
sleep, — at least a floor to sleep on, usually benches, some- 
times a few rough beds which are to be made comfortable 
by the travellers' own blankets. The etiquette of the sit- 
uation requires, of course, that the hut shall be left in as 
good order as that in which it was found. Mountain- 
climbers regard each other with fraternal good will and 
treat their common property with due respect. If a hut 
is, like this one, in sight of a town below, the villagers 
very often fire guns as a greeting to men about to make an 



" LION OF THE ALPS " 



185 



ascent, and those who are camping over night burn little 
bonfires or send off Eoman candles by way of response. 
It is very easy to understand why it is not wise to fire guns 
from this point, for any unnecessary noise of that sort is 
always carefully avoided for fear lest an avalanche might 
be started on the mountain-side. 

The dark wooded mountain nearest us on the right is a 
part of the Ober-Eothhorn. Eising between us and the 
mountain farther to the right than we can see is the Kiff el- 
berg, from which magnificent views can be had at dif- 
ferent points on its slopes, which overlook the glaciers 
between here and the Monte Eosa range. You find a stand- 
point upon the Eiffelberg, marked 60 on the map, and by 
tracing the lines you see that the view promised will give 
an aspect of the Matterhorn slightly different from what 
we have seen before. We shall be looking at the moun- 
tain from farther east and shall see more of the broad 
expanse of the Furggen glacier which lies on the side 
toward the Breithorn. 

60. " Lion of the Alps," the Matterhorn (14,705 feet) 

You remember down in the village of Zermatt we looked 
up toward the Matterhorn and saw the Homli with its 
peak standing up against the snows (Stereograph 55)? 
Again we saw the Hornli standing partly between us and 
the mountain when we were up on the Schwartzsee 
(Stereograph 57). Now we have moved farther to the 
east and we see the Hornli from still another point of 
view. It is that little peak which stands up against the 



186 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

white expanse of the Matterhorn Glacier on the west (right 
side of the peak). Yon remember it was from the upper 
slope of the Matterhorn cliffs that the four men fell to 
that glacier below on the day when they had celebrated 
the first conquest of the summit. 

We can scarcely make out the exact position of the 
Schwartzsee this side of the Hornli. Nevertheless we 
know it was on that dark elevation we stood when we were 
closest to the Matterhorn (Stereograph 57), when we 
looked over the great Gorner Glacier (Stereograph 58) and 
back toward Zermatt (Stereograph 59). Zermatt is now 
beyond the range of our vision on the right, while the 
Gorner Glacier lies between the nearer dark slope on our 
left and the more hazy slopes beyond. We see the stream 
coming from the glacier down on our right. 

The point where we stand now is about eight thousand 
feet above the sea-level, a height which under ordinary 
circumstances we should consider quite imposing; but 
here, in comparison with the Matterhorn's stature of 
14,705 feet, this seems but a slight elevation. 

All this time we are looking, you remember, towards 
Italy. Indeed those fleecy clouds that we see floating 
across the face of the mountain may have come up from 
the sunny waters of the Mediterranean a little more than 
a hundred miles away. The Matterhorn is famous, even 
among these cloud-wreathed mountains of Switzerland, 
for the sudden changes in weather experienced by those 
who climb its sides. The fact that so much of the surface 
of the Matterhorn is bare rock has a good deal to do with 



CLOUD FORMATION ON THE MATTERHORN 187 

the cloud phenomena, so meteorologists tell ns. The 
vertical height of the mountain makes it almost like a 
huge stone chimney standing up in the sunshine, and the 
atmospheric changes about its sides are naturally much 
more frequent and striking than those over the surface of 
a mountain where perpetual snow and ice maintain a 
fairly equable temperature. The cloud-wreaths on a 
mountain like this make very curious and dramatic effects 
not only for people who are climbing but for friends who 
stay behind to watch the climbers. If we, for instance, 
were watching certain little black specks through our tele- 
scope, anxious to note a prosperous progress toward the 
top, it would be a cause for great anxiety (perhaps need- 
less anxiety) when a wreath of cloud quite covered them 
from sight. Perhaps through a break in the cloud we 
might happen to see the very same precious black specks 
a little higher up on a certain slope. Then once more the 
clouds may gather. Are those men safe? We who wait 
below can do nothing but wait until time shows whether 
the cloud brought disaster or not. 

Only a few years ago an American who was climbing up 
the east side of the Matterhorn with a party of friends 
untied himself from the rope which fastened the party 
together, and a few moments later, climbing over an inno- 
cent-looking rock, he slipped and fell. It was a fall of two 
thousand feet clear to rocks and ice below and nothing 
could save him. Such things will happen. Usually acci- 
dents can be traced back afterwards to some carelessness 
on the part of an individual, but that is small comfort for 



188 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

anyone when the tragedy is over. People have not yet 
forgotten how, forty years ago, a Eussian crossing the 
Findelen Glacier, over behind us at the north, fell into a 
deep crevasse, head down, and for four hours waved one 
hand as a signal for help, while some of the party watched, 
and others went down to Zermatt for additional rope. 
When they came back it was too late. His hand was still. 

Eeferring once more, on Map No. 9, to the semicircle of 
mountain peaks at the head of the Visp valley, you see 
east of the Matterhorn that long crooked range beginning 
with the Breithorn and running southeast by Monte Eosa 
to the Cima di J azzi. You remember that when we were 
over near the Schwartzsee we looked southeast and saw 
the Breithorn with Pollux and Lyskamm beyond. (Eef er 
for just a moment to Stereograph 58.) There you see we 
had on our left the high, dark Eiffelberg just facing the 
Breithorn. Now we go up on the Eiffelberg itself, look- 
ing almost at right angles to the direction of our former 
outlook, i.e., straight towards the Breithorn. We are to 
stand at the apex of the red lines marked 61 and look 
practically south to the glaciers and mountain summits 
between them. 

61. Breithorn, Monte Hosa Group, from the 
Gornergrat 

The Gornergrat is a special name for one ridge of the 
Eiffelberg. You can easily identify it on Map 9. 

Until a very few years ago the only way to reach this 
point from Zermatt was to walk or come on horseback. 



THE BKEITHORN FROM THE GORNERGRAT 189 



Now there is a little electric railway, with a third rail 
toothed, according to the custom of these regions, and that 
brings travellers up from the depth of the valley in an 
hour and a half. It is one of the most interesting of all 
the little mountain railways hereabouts. The grade is, of 
course, tremendously steep, — sometimes one foot in five. 
There are several interesting rock tunnels. One of them 
is six hundred feet long and obliquely semicircular in 
curve, the upper end of it one hundred and thirty feet 
above the lower end. 

The summit of the Breithorn, as we look across from 
here, is about three miles away; but the journey up and 
back, counting the climb from Zermatt, takes twelve or 
fourteen hours even for the most experienced moun- 
taineers. The more common way of approach is from 
the Theodul Pass on the west side, that is, off at our 
right; but some travellers do go up from this side. They 
climb the Triftje, that dark rocky ridge that we see at the 
right, — then go up the Breithorn Glacier just east (to the 
left), and so on up to the summit. 

The Breithorn ascent is full of danger and excitement 
like that of the other mountains hereabouts; but in truth 
one does not need to go climbing the Breithorn in order to 
risk his bones. Several lives have been lost, even coming 
up from Zermatt to the point where we stand now. It is 
always a great deal wiser to take a guide from Zermatt, for 
no stranger can ever be sure where avalanches are likely 
to descend. Eock avalanches are among the most serious 
dangers on these Alpine heights. Each man in the party 



190 SWITZEELAND THEOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 



naturally has to dig his alpenstock into the mountain-side 
to maintain a footing. In this way he is likely to start 
rock avalanches of his own, and these, added to the occa- 
sional cannonades by a mountain itself, make the ascent 
more than ever full of peril for men lower down in the 
line of march. 

It seems a strange place in which to find any relics of 
earlier ages of man, but some thirty years ago (1873) two 
Americans who were up on this high cliff, as we are 
now, looking over to the Breithorn, rolled a stone down 
to that glacier below for the pleasure of hearing the 
crash, and under it found a bronze spear-head seven or 
eight inches long. One end was shaped like a chisel, the 
other had evidently been prepared for fitting into a 
handle. Some prehistoric man went out hunting the 
bears of Switzerland many ages ago with that spear-head. 

It is evident that the G-orner Glacier, which we saw 
from the Schwartzsee, must lie at our feet, between us 
and the base of the Breithorn. 

Now we will move nearly a mile to the left and look 
across almost directly south to the Lyskamm. On the 
map four red lines branch from the same point. We are 
to look out between the two having the number 62 at 
their ends. 

62. Lyskamm, Monte JEtosa Group, from the 
Gornergrat 

How hard it is, again, to estimate distances over such a 
landscape as this! It is really about four miles across to 



GUIDES FOR THE LYSKAMM 



191 



the Lyskamm summit from these cliffs. It is a part of 
the Gorner Glacier away down below there in the valley. 

The regular season for mountain-climbing in these 
regions is only about four months, from June to October, 
although during recent years there has been more and 
more mountain-climbing in mid-winter. The rocky peaks, 
they say, are safest late in the summer when they have 
had a good chance to get as clear as they ever will be from 
ice and snow. The peaks that are always covered with 
snow are naturally much safer earlier in the summer, be- 
fore the snow masses have become too much softened and 
loosened by the heat of the sun. If we were to get a 
guide to take us up the Lyskamm summit and back we 
should pay him 100 francs ($20) for the expedition. For 
excursions of less account many of the men are willing to 
take 8 or 10 francs a day. There are well-organized unions 
among the guides for their professional protection and the 
maintenance of a good quality of work. The best of them 
are fine, solid, self-respecting men who make warm and 
lasting friendships among the travellers with whom they 
pass their days. It would not be fair to think of them as 
carrying on their work wholly in a hard, commercial 
spirit, for with many of them mountain-climbing is a ver- 
itable passion; they simply have the happiness of earning 
their bread and butter doing the very thing they most 
enjoy. Many of them, too, are heroes of the finest sort, 
as sudden emergencies have over and over given proof. It 
was while guiding a party over a high ridge up there on 
the Lyskamm that a Zermatt man, a few years ago, saved 



192 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



two lives by throwing himself backwards over the side of 
a steep ridge in order to balance the weight of a man on 
the same rope, who had fallen on the other side! 

On any long excursion a porter must be hired in ad- 
dition to the guide. He is oftentimes an apprentice at 
the other man^s trade, but until he has learned it, and 
while he is only carrying fuel, blankets and food, his wages 
are considerably smaller. A porter will go up the Lys- 
kamm with you for 12 francs. If one is going from this 
Zermatt side the customary route is up this glacier which 
leads from the left, and then up the eastern slopes of rock 
toward the summit. 

One of the great dangers to be guarded against is the 
breaking of what they call " snow cornices," — caps of snow 
projecting out over the head of a cliff and held only by 
the cohesion of the mass of snow itself. It is naturally 
very difficult for a man to be always quite sure whether 
solid rock is under the snow or whether he has gone out 
on one of these projecting cornices. The men below the 
leader have to be on the lookout against his danger in 
this respect. There have been two very bad accidents 
over on the Italian side opposite here on account of the 
breaking away of such projecting cornices, 

Now we must take one look still farther east, for close 
by, just at our left hand, stands the very highest mountain 
in all Switzerland, — Monte Eosa. It is not so familiar in 
song and story as Mont Blanc, and it has not nearly so 
many curious traditions haunting it as has the Matter- 
horn; but its summit is nearly as high as Mont Blanc 



MONTE ROSA FROM THE GORNERGRAT 193 

(15,215 against 15,781 feet), and if one wants thrilling 
adventure and hair-breadth escapes, the ascent of the 
mountain is full of possibilities exciting enough to satisfy 
any one thirsty for achievements. Do you notice that 
one cliff of exposed rock off to our left? That will be 
seen on our extreme right when we turn to Monte Rosa. 



63. Summit of Monte Rosa (15 ,215 feet) from the 
Gomergrat, — Birthplace of the Mighty 
Gomer Glacier 

The highest part of the mountain is not, as we might 
possibly suppose, that very sharp peak just opposite where 
we stand. It is the more broken, rounding peak, a little 
farther up to the right, just at the end of the cloud- 
bank. The actual top of the mountain is a tiny plateau 
giving room for hardly two people to stand upon at once. 
It is about six miles across from where we are at the pres- 
ent moment. Even at this point on the G-ornergrat we 
are 9,067 feet above the sea-level, half as high again as 
Mount Washington; but elevations of this rank count for 
very little at the head of the Visp valley, where Monte 
Rosa and the Matterhorn look down on so many noble 
rivals. 

Do you remember how this Monte Rosa range looked 
when we saw it from that high road over the Furka Pass 
(Stereograph 48)? 

It was only fifty years ago (1854) that Monte Rosa was 
first climbed. Most of the adventurous climbing in those 



194 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



early days was done by Englishmen, and Englishmen were 
the adventurous souls in this case. 

A route often taken by those who come to climb Monte 
Eosa is by way of the Gorner Glacier, using it like a high- 
way from the Eiffel to the foot of the mountain here. A 
party may ascend the glacier, as we see it straight ahead, 
and follow up to the left around the rocky mass of the 
upper part of the mountain to the east side; then up over 
one of those steep ridges toward the right. They say that 
in crossing such glaciers as this, one gets to be expert in 
detecting differences in whiteness. The snow often looks 
whiter where it masks the opening of a crevasse than 
where it rests on an honest, solid field of ice. Such a 
snow bridge over a crevasse is always a serious problem 
in a place like this. It takes an experienced guide to esti- 
mate truly the amount of weight which the bridge will 
bear. Many and many a time men have crawled on their 
hands and knees over such snow bridges in order to dis- 
tribute their weight as evenly as possible and so lessen 
the danger of breaking down the snow during their pas- 
sage. The pleasure men find in such risks as this is 
almost incomprehensible to quieter people, but all prac- 
ticed mountaineers are alike in their enjoyment of things 
that terrify the rest of us. 

It is a very interesting thing to compare what we actually 
see here with what is put down on the map. The map is 
beautifully accurate in its representation of just these 
very rocks and ice-rivers in their true relations. You see 
that dark island in the midst of the snows, just beyond 



MONTE ROSA FROM THE GORNERGRAT 



195 



this guide's head? The map sets that down as " Ob dem 
See." Those ragged "black cliffs which stand up still 
higher on the mountain you see marked on the map as 
constituting the Jagerhorn. That rounding knee of the 
mountain, which protrudes from the snow just above the 
glacier at the west, that is, towards our right, a section of 
which we saw from our last position, the map locates as 
the Plattje. It is very interesting and well worth while 
to take a little time in a place like this to compare what 
we see and the map. If, besides, we make a mental note 
of the scale of the map as given in the margin, we can 
obtain a clear notion of distances and directions as well 
as of the actual appearance of the mountains themselves. 

Now we can get back to Zermatt in about an hour 
and a half. On the way down we should make a few min- 
utes' stay just above the Eiffelalp Hotel to look north 
down the Visp valley. You remember we did look once 
down the valley from the Schwartzsee (Stereograph 59), 
seeing the high mountain wall that stands over the Visp 
above its eastern bank. This time we shall see more of 
the mountains on the western side of the same valley. 
Note the long lines numbered 64 which branch from the 
Riffelberg. 

64* The Charming Zermatt, Valley of the Visp, 
beneath the Mighty W eisshorn 

See what insignificant, tiny things the houses are down 
in Zermatt now. The hotel down yonder, although so far 
below us, is nearly three thousand feet above the village 



196 SWITZEELAND THKOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 



of Zermatt, so it is no wonder the town buildings are 
dwarfed as they are. The wonder seems rather to be how 
an Alpine village situated like Zermatt escapes destruc- 
tion by avalanches. It hardly seems possible that it 
should escape when we see these enormous and steep 
slopes, and remember how their load of winter snow has 
to be disposed of some way when spring comes on. If it 
were not for the forests on the Unter-Gabelhorn, just be- 
hind Zermatt, the village might have been destroyed long 
ago; but those thickly set trees act as a screen to hold 
the snow off until it has had time to melt and come down 
by way of the mountain streams in a manner that can be 
reckoned on. The streams themselves are enormously in- 
creased in volume when the snow is going off. It is no 
wonder they build their river bridges as high as they do. 
You remember the one that we saw down near Stalden 
(Stereograph 54)? 

It seems strange that people should ever have made 
their homes at all in a valley like this, although we must 
needs be grateful that history has so written itself. The 
region, so we are told, was known to the Eomans as far 
back as 200 B.C. Indeed Eoman coins have been found 
during recent years in places about the Theodul Pass, 
south of the Schwartzsee, indicating probably that the 
pass was used then, as it is now, for a way of exit from the 
valley. The village itself is mentioned in historic docu- 
ments as early as 1280. From 1810 to 1813 this Zermatt 
region was a part of the French Empire, but in 1814 it 
became a part of the Swiss Confederation. 



THE WEISSHOEN ABOVE ZEKMATT 



197 



The Weisshorn holds itself so magnificently above its 
neighbors yonder that we might expect it to be visible 
from long distances. Sure enough — it was this very peak 
that stood up so prominently on the horizon when we were 
looking in its direction from the Furka Pass (Stereo- 
graph 48). Now the Furka is between forty and fifty 
miles away at the northeast. We are looking nearly north 
at present. 

Yon notice how a valley opens up toward the west at 
the extreme left of onr present field of vision? That val- 
ley is often used as a route by which to pass up between 
these mountains on the western side of the valley and to 
climb the Ober-Gabelhorn, the Kothhorn and the Weiss- 
horn. The Weisshorn is the dominant peak as we look 
from here, — that huge, symmetrical pyramid that gazes 
over the shoulders of the mountains on the west side of 
the valley. There, again, is a chance for the thrilling of 
one's nerves — if mountaineers are allowed to have nerves. 
The route which is on the whole most practical on the 
way to the summit includes a passage over a very narrow 
ridge, almost a knife-edge, where the snow sometimes has 
to be packed down cautiously with the feet in order to 
make the ridge wide enough to walk on. With a chasm 
two thousand feet on the right side, and another of the 
same depth on the left, it is a place in which one needs 
all his available wits. One advantage a snowy ridge like 
this has over rocky ridges, — there is no danger that boul- 
ders will come rolling down upon one as he climbs. The 
snow can be counted upon with much more security than 



198 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



loose rocks, for guides become able to judge very exactly 
of the softness or hardness of great snow-banks, according 
to the weather and the temperature; whereas nobody can 
tell when a mass of rock already cracked may take the 
notion to descend and sweep three or four miles, carrying 
a great landslide along with it. 

The wind caused down in a valley by the descent of a 
great rock avalanche, as well as by the descent of a snow 
avalanche, is something very dangerous, and it has a cer- 
tain uncanny, ghostly character which makes it greatly 
dreaded by the inhabitants of the region. When rocks or 
snow strike you bodily you know why you are hurt; but 
when it is only the shock of an avalanche a mile away 
which causes your own disaster it seems as if the spirits 
of the air were really making war against mortals, as Zer- 
matt people used to believe. There is a village called 
Eanda down there in the Visp valley, just a little beyond 
the farthest point that we can see here, which once lost 
several houses merely from the wind of a great avalanche 
so far away that no damage at all was caused by the snow 
or rocks themselves. 

All this time, over at our right, at the other side of the 
mountains which wall in this eastern slope of the valley, 
there is another village which attracts armies of summer 
visitors every year. We might go over to Saas-Pee by a 
pass between the mountains and over three or four gla- 
ciers full of yawning crevasses; or, if we prefer a more 
safe and commonplace journey, we can go down the valley 
to Stalden and then up the valley of the Saas-Visp to a 



SAAS-EEE AND THE ALPHUBEL 



199 



point just east of Eanda. Look on Map No. 9 and the 
relative location of Saas-Fee and Zermatt will be per- 
fectly clear. The red lines numbered 65 show that we are 
to look southwest. 

65. Swiss Samlet near Eternal Snows— Saas-Fee, the 
Fee Glacier and the Alphubel 

What a strange place it is in which to spend one's child- 
hood! Yet, probably the snows and towering mountains 
seem quite a matter of course to these toddling babies 
here in the grass. If they were to be taken away to a 
commonplace town on the plains, they would probably be 
eager to climb somewhere, — anywhere in order to get a 
sight of the mountains, as Heidi did in Johanna Spyri's 
charming story. Of course a village has mountain walls 
all around it! How else should a village stand? 

Even these houses, nestled in as they seem to be, at the 
foot of the heights, are almost six thousand feet above 
the level of the sea; and the air is so pure and dry and 
bracing that people in search of health and vigor come to 
Saas-Fee for the summer and are not disappointed. 
These little folks make a few honest pennies of their own 
by gathering flowers and Alpine strawberries in season to 
sell to the summer visitors. They are not kept in school 
very long during the year, for this is a Catholic canton 
and sparsely settled too, and the local requirements in re- 
gard to school attendance are much slighter than in the 
neighborhood of Berne and Zurich. These children speak 
German with their mother when they axe at home. As 



200 SWITZERLAND THEOUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

soon as that little boy is old enough he will surely be sent 
up into the pastures every summer day to look out for the 
cows and the goats. They will give him some bread and 
cheese for his dinner, and he will spend the whole day 
away up there looking off at the sky, watching a stray 
eagle now and then, and waiting for supper-time. The 
cows and the goats are precious treasures for these fami- 
lies. It is an old saying here that " Milk has four chil- 
dren: cream, cheese, serac and pigs." Serac is a kind of 
cheese, — a very tough and not particularly savory product 
of skim milk. Some of the skim milk is made into this 
form for family consumption, and some of it goes to feed 
the pigs and fatten them ready for the winter. 

The mountain that we see at the right, just over those 
sunburnt chalets, is the Alphubel. And some ten miles 
away in that direction is Zermatt. Away over at the ex- 
treme left we can see the top of the Allalinhorn peering 
above the intervening heights. A great many mountain- 
eers cross these peaks and traverse the glaciers between 
them, although the views from these summits are not so 
grand as those to be had farther up at the head of the 
Visp valley where we have recently been. 

Let us go nearer to one of the houses of Saas-Fee and 
see a little more in detail how a country home appears. 
We must be warned beforehand that the real thing in a 
Swiss village like this is as different from the peasant's 
cottage in the opera as one of the Swiss farmers is differ- 
ent from a shepherd in an old-fashioned poem, with blue 
ribbons tied about his knees and a gilded crook to guard 



AN ALPINE HOME IN SAAS-FEE 



201 



the sheep. There is a good deal of prose about the life 
of the farming people in these poor little villages. In- 
deed it is all prose except the grandeur of the mountains 
outside and the warmth of the personal affections that 
brighten their individual lives. 

66. Life in Switzerland— a typical Alpine Home, 
Saas-Fee 

This good wife has done her duty so far as concerns 
washing the family linen. That is evident; but the family 
standards of neatness and order are quite different from 
those that we ourselves cherish. In one side of this 
house, under the same roof with the father and mother 
and children, we shall find the cows and the pigs com- 
fortably located. It is not surprising, when we come to 
think of it, that people here should take these animals 
into familiar intimacy, for they all share the same dan- 
gers from winter's cold and from avalanches, and the 
sharing of dangers not only brings men closer together 
but also brings man and beast closer together in an hon- 
est, simple way. That door down under the stairway leads 
to the cows' quarters with this family. The pine boards 
of which this house is mainly built take a beautiful brown 
by exposure to the sun, and few houses are given any 
artificial coloring. The dry air of the heights keeps the 
wood from decaying, as it might do in other climates 
when not protected by paint, and so these simple dwell- 
ings stand for a great number of years without becoming 
uninhabitable. The whitewash that we see here is rather 



202 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

exceptional. Comparatively few buildings are covered 
with stucco or plaster, and very few of the houses are con- 
spicuous in the landscape by reason of such whiteness. 
They almost always have an appearance like that of the 
houses in Zermatt, — gray and brown, as if they belonged 
in their respective spots as much as the lichen-covered 
rocks. It is rather strange that in this country of rocks 
where the earth-skeleton stands out bare in such con- 
spicuous ways, that there should be so little building in 
stone. The cities do, of course, indulge in stone construc- 
tion, but out here in the country, where one would think 
it might be fairly easy to quarry the material and build 
with it, the peasants seldom seem to think of the possi- 
bility of such a thing. Now and then, when a village has 
been destroyed by fire, stone construction has been delib- 
erately adopted as a safeguard against the recurrence of 
the same danger; but Swiss country people do not seem to 
think instinctively of working in that way. 

This couple have lived here in the same spot practically 
all their lives, knowing little of any region beyond a 
twenty-mile limit of distance. The man's world is 
bounded by his hay-field here, the upland pasture where 
he takes his cows in the summer, and an occasional 
thought of the great heights that stand around the hori- 
zon. The woman's world? — it is almost entirely made up 
of the work inside those four walls. There is a plenty of 
work to fill all the days in the year, for there are only 
the most primitive furniture and appliances here — none 
of the modern contrivances for saving time and labor. If 



COUNTRY LIFE ON THE HEIGHTS 



203 



she has any minutes to spare, she will come out here to 
the fence and gather the burdock leaves to be salted down 
for the pigs. Yes, indeed; every leaf that grows is made 
to serve some useful purpose by these thrifty highlanders. 

Do they ever take time to look off to the mountains? 
Do they ever go down behind the house to the river that 
runs between that dark hill and the rounding dome be- 
yond? Do they look at the stream and wonder where it 
comes from and where it is going? Do they ever think to 
look at the skies for their beauty as well as for their pre- 
diction of good weather for the hay and the washing? 
Perhaps. Perhaps not. It would seem, if we were think- 
ing the thing out on theory alone, that Switzerland ought 
to be peopled by a nation of poets; but as a matter of fact 
poets of Swiss birth are strangely few; the national genius 
does not run in that direction. Deep religious thinkers 
there have been; sturdy patriots there have been; scien- 
tists whose close observation and wise generalizations have 
added a whole new chapter to the world's knowledge; but 
on the whole the esthetic imagination does not seem to 
be characteristic of the people of this most beautiful land 
in all Europe. We might perhaps naturally compare the 
conditions of life here with the conditions of life in Scot- 
land, but the Scotch folk do have a strong vein of poetry 
running through their sturdy makeup. There must be 
some accounting for the existing condition of things if the 
right philosopher were at hand to tell us all about it. 

Would you not like to vo inside one of these houses? 
We can do this; the people are kindly and hospitable and 



204 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

will quite willingly let us have a peep inside a village liv- 
ing-room. We will go on a few rods and make our call at 
the home of one of the Swiss "mothers in Israel/' hard 
at work for her family like Solomon's wise woman. 

67* Industry and Simplicity , — Interior of a Switzer's 
Mountain Home,— Saas- Fee 

Bare and homely, is it not? And yet in its own fashion 
this domestic interior obeys William Morris's famous rule 
for house furnishing: "Have nothing in your house 
which you do not either know to be useful or believe to be 
beautiful." Almost everything you see comes under the 
head of simple, honest utility. The floor, the walls, the 
ceiling, the doors, are all of native wood, chiefly the pine 
which we have seen growing in so many places on the hill- 
sides hereabouts. There is no furniture which is not 
absolutely essential. That big box-stove is surely a neces- 
sity of life during the long cold winters when the snow 
lies ten or twenty or thirty feet deep over the roadways. 
There is a bed over here in the right-hand corner; we can 
see just a bit of its woollen covering. The spinning-wheel 
and our friend's wooden chair are certainly necessities of 
living. See how primitive is the construction of the wheel, 
and especially the construction of that tall distaff which 
holds the rolls of wool. No doubt it was made, if not by 
the man of the house, by his father or his grandfather 
before him, without recourse to any outside manufacturer. 
Those shoes too (they are not the size that Cinderella 
wore to her ball), are of village manufacture. Probably 



PRIMITIVE HOME-MAKING 



205 



nothing except the stove, the clock, the saint's shrine, and 
the framed picture of the Madonna, came from any dis- 
tance or have the distinction of being made in another 
canton. If this woman were to tell us about her household 
furnishings in her own Swiss-German she would give us an 
account of how that checked woollen bedspread was woven 
from yarn spun in its turn out of the wool of her own 
sheep when she was a young girl. Her own stockings and 
petticoats are of home-made woollen stuff. Hardly any- 
thing of her personal belongings, except that queer little 
close bonnet and the handkerchief knotted about her 
neck, were bought for money at a shop. In fact she has 
had so small an amount of money to spend in the course 
of her life that we should be amazed if we knew the exact 
amount. In all probability she and her goodman together 
have never handled as much ready cash as an ordinary 
American mechanic handles in a year, thinking nothing 
of it. 

Switzerland is a good place in which to see world-mak- 
ing still in process. We have seen how the glaciers grind 
off the mountain sides and carry debris down into the 
valleys to accumulate into fields, making the beginnings 
of husbandry. Here we can see the most simple, frugal 
conditions of primitive home-making. The very simplic- 
ity and bareness of the place make a rather pleasing con- 
trast to our overcrowded rooms in other lands. If we 
want to see what are the real necessities of life, here we 
have them; food, shelter and clothing. There is a patch 
of rye and potatoes out beside this house, and a couple of 



206 SWITZEBLAND THEOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 

cows with a goat or two are in the care of one of the 
grandchildren up on a steep hillside "alp" or pasture. 
The house itself is a fairly comfortable shelter. It cer- 
tainly keeps out rain and snow, and it allows a reasonable 
degree of warmth if one is not too fastidious in the matter 
of ventilation. The Swiss people are not. As for cloth- 
ing, we see this busy housewife can very nearly cover all 
the needs in that direction with the help of her own two 
hands. 

But again, just see how, even under conditions as primi- 
tive as these, the inborn instinct of humanity for some 
touch of beauty does show itself. Do you see how that 
farther door is panelled? It surely was not necessary to 
give the two panels those particular shapes; the space ar- 
rangement was a flight of fancy on the part of the builder 
of the house or some neighbor who helped him make the 
doors, and feminine taste has expressed itself in the cross 
division of the space of that woollen bed-quilt by means of 
woven lines, and in the fringe which borders the edge. 
The stripes in that quilt were colored with home-made 
dyes, and there again the fancy of the weaver had a chance 
for another little flight. Stay just a minute; there is 
something else where the feeling for decoration shows 
itself, perhaps in advance of these other homely household 
manifestations that we have just noticed. A devoted 
Catholic household like this is certain to have a picture of 
the Virgin and an image of some favorite saint. These 
stand for the owner's love of beauty as well as her love 
of the faith in which she was born and bred. That little 



THE INSTINCT FOE DECOKATION 



207 



shrine has an arched top which was meant to be beautiful, 
and the Madonna is set within a frame which was intended 
to do honor to the beauty of her face and figure. The 
historians of art tell us that the effort after beauty is sure 
to express itself first in connection with a people's religi- 
ous faith, and here we find an instance of the working of 
the rule. 

But oh, the long winters in a place like this! A house- 
wife like our hostess does not read; perhaps she learned 
the art when she was a young girl; she probably can read 
the few books they have in the house; but reading as a 
resource does not often occur to her. The light of this 
living room during the long, long winter evenings is only 
candle light. They sit and talk; she spins or knits; the 
father of the family makes baskets or builds a new chair or 
two. They talk in the dim light and they go to bed early 
so as to be ready for another day of the same work. It is 
an uneventful life; but it might be as happy an existence 
as could be led anywhere on this earth. Is it not a little 
curious that people born and brought up in a place like 
this should so often be unaware of the riches lying all 
around them? We talk about needing to prepare for a 
journey abroad; — one really needs to spend years in 
preparation for a simple, quiet country life like this, in 
order to know its real worth and make the days give out 
their value while they run. A man who has worked hard 
for thirty years in a crowded, dingy town, would feel rich 
with the surroundings of this home to gaze upon every 
time he stepped outside his door; but he is just the one 



208 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

who cannot live among these surroundings. So the world 
is made up. 

There are places in Switzerland only a few miles away 
whose suggestions are as different as possible from those 
of a little mountain village like Saas-Fee; — twenty miles 
west of here in the Ehone valley is the town of Sion, that 
looks like a made-up illustration for some mediaeval ballad. 
You will find the location of the town on the general map 
of Switzerland just west of the northern corner of the sec- 
tion which includes the Visp valley. We shall look at the 
old town from the east, as the red lines numbered 68 show. 

68. Sion, with its Mediwval Homes and Castles, 
Rhone Valley 

Doesn't it make you think how 

" The splendor falls on castle walls, 
And snowy summits, old in story " \ 

That castle away up on the hill at the left suggests at once 
the " Idyls of the King" and the mediaeval tales of 
knights and troubadours in the age of chivalry. No doubt 
they were stormy times when that castle was built, and 
it was with a very distinct and wise purpose that it 
perched high up on that cliff; for, before the days 
of modern musketry and heavy ordnance, a building like 
that, protected by high walls, was practically safe from in- 
vaders during a long siege. See how the houses of the 
town cluster around the foot of the other hill just as the 
houses clustered around the castle at Thun (Stereograph 
22). In old times they used to have exciting doings here 



MEDIAEVAL FEUDS 



209 



in Sion. The secular lords of this region were always at 
swords'-points, both figuratively and literally, with the 
bishops of Sion. The fact is, both the lords and the 
bishops depended for their incomes largely upon the offer- 
ings, voluntary or involuntary, of the farming people and 
the working people on their lands, and mutual jealousy led 
to serious and bloody feuds. In the middle of the four- 
teenth century there was a Seigneur de la Tour who re- 
fused fealty to the Bishop of Sion, besieged the bishop's 
castle up yonder and killed several of his people. The 
bishop retaliated and the feud lasted for years and years, 
though the pope tried his best to reconcile the enemies. 
In 1475 Antoine de la Tour seized the bishop and his 
chaplain and threw them into the Rhone, which flows be- 
yond the hills just at this side of that farther mountain. 
Then the lord's castles were burned in their turn and he 
and his family were driven out of the country. It is 
almost impossible to follow clearly in one's mind the rela- 
tions of the bishops and the lords in those mediaeval cen- 
turies, for their spheres of authority overlapped and inter- 
locked with most subtle complications. Indeed it was 
because their affairs were so intermixed that they so often 
came to grief. The bishops themselves were deposed 
from their civil authority over the common people in 
1628, when the Valais region became a republic. 

The old times are very picturesque as we look back 
upon them in imagination, but probably, when we do go 
back to them in that way, we think almost entirely of 
knights and squires and fine ladies shut up safe in the 



210 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

castles. We seldom give much thought to the men who 
worked in the fields and built the walls, who went fishing 
in the river and who toiled over the mountain passes be- 
tween here and Italy to bring home the few luxuries that 
were demanded and enjoyed by the castle people. Life is 
hard enough now for the rank and file, but then the rank 
and file were not counted at all, except like so many cattle, 
valuable in proportion to the services they rendered, mak- 
ing life pleasanter for those of noble birth. How much 
pleasure the nobles themselves got out of their fierce quar- 
relling seems questionable to-day. There would seem to 
have been quite as much tragedy as is good for life when 
one had to shut himself up on the highest cliff in the 
neighborhood in order to protect himself from his nearest 
neighbors. When you stop to think of it, is it not a 
strange turning of tables that Time has brought about? 
We fill our modern cities with artificial cliffs twenty stories 
high, where men try not to isolate themselves, but, instead, 
to associate themselves as closely as possible for mutual 
advantage in the way of heating and lighting, communica- 
tion and transportation. In the old times men climbed 
mountains to get away from their fellow-men; now they 
build mountains in order to get more closely together. 

It would be interesting to go down through the streets 
of the town, for those old buildings are many of them very 
picturesque at short range. There are some five thousand 
people living here now, and there is a little river which 
flows down through a street of the town in a channel cov- 
ered over by wooden beams. To this boy it is all as familiar 



AN EMIGRANT OF THE FUTURE 



211 



as the streets that you knew when you were a child his 
age, in a much more commonplace neighborhood. Very 
likely he has a dream in his head about going away, per- 
haps far oyer at the other (eastern) side of that great 
mountain or on to Vienna where people make fortunes. 
Perhaps he means to turn " about face " and go up to 
Hamburg, shipping by a steamer, as his cousins have done 
before him, and going to America. He wonders greatly 
that we should care to come so far to see the old castles 
up on the hills. 



THE GBEAT ST. BEENAED 



Let us look again at the general map of the country and 
see how the Italian frontier lies some twenty-five miles 
south of Sion. You see there a section, in the canton 
Valais, marked out for reproduction on a larger scale. It 
includes the Great St. Bernard and runs down just over 
the Italian line. Now find Map. No. 10, where this sec- 
tion is represented by itself. 

The pass over the Great St. Bernard is one of the most 
famous old roads in southern Europe. 

On our way to this pass, found on the lower part of 
Map No. 10, we shall stop at Bourg St. Pierre, at the 
apex of the red lines marked 69, six miles or more from 
the Great St. Bernard itself. 

69. Inn where Napoleon stayed, Bourg St. Pierre,— 
Moad to the Great St. Bernard Bass 

We are looking nearly north now, just a little east of 
north. Italy lies behind us and we are facing the Swiss 
country toward which the Eoman legions marched more 
than once to subdue rebellious Gallic and Germanic tribes. 
Armies have marched up this way many and many a time 
in the old days before there were any buildings here. 
Missionaries passed over this road from Eome, — early con- 
verts to Christianity, who started out in the name of their 

212 



THE GREAT ST. BERNARD 



213 



Master to carry His gospel to the heathen among these 
mountains and farther north in the woods and wilder- 
nesses that lay beyond. Later stilly it was down oyer this 
road that northern invaders came pouring into Italy, — 
fierce, untamed barbaric hordes, utterly ignorant of what- 
ever was precious to the Romans in their over-cultivated 
civilization, and as careless as they were ignorant of the 
monuments of Roman genius and taste. Then, later still, 
in the Dark Ages, Saracen robbers haunted this pass, cap- 
turing men of wealth and position, who attempted to 
make the journey over the Alpine boundary, and holding 
them for ransom. Later still, the great G-erman 
monarchs, princes of the Holy Roman Empire, passed in 
state over this highway on their way to Rome and on their 
way home. You remember Longf ellow's " Robert of 
Sicily," and how he met his brother, " Valmond, Emperor 
of Allemaine " ? The German monarch on his way down 
to Rome might well have travelled in dignified state along 
this way over the mountain shoulder! Then, one of 
the most famous journeys of all, — Napoleon went through 
here on his way to the battlefield of Marengo. That was 
in 1800, and they still point out to us that three-story inn 
yonder as the place where Napoleon stayed overnight. 

Slate-covered roofs like this on the little stone building 
are not so common as we might expect to find them here, 
but you see this cluster of buildings shows stone construc- 
tion entirely in the place of wood. That is a picturesque 
old tower on the church, is it not, with those arched win- 
dows looking toward the mountain-tops? 



214 SWITZERLAND THKOUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

There has been an inn of some sort on the St. Bernard 
for many centuries. The monks began it, establishing 
their station as a means of helping travellers in need. A 
little farther in the direction in which this man is going is 
the famous hostelry, still maintained by monks, where the 
St. Bernard dogs have been for many generations the effi- 
cient helpers of the men. We will go up to the hospice 
and ask for a sight of the dogs. 

We all remember stories of the St. Bernard dogs and 
how they have saved the lives of travellers lost in the 
snow on the mountain-side. The stories are all founded 
on fact, although at the present time, now that the road 
is maintained in such good order, and now that guides are 
so many and so well trained, it is comparatively seldom 
that travellers are actually lost and in any tragic condition 
of exhaustion. Still the cost of keeping the great, hand- 
some creatures attached to the monastery is kept up, 
partly as a matter of sentiment and partly for the service 
which they really might do in an emergency. If we go 
over to the monastery at the right hour we can easily 
see a number of the fine animals eating their breakfast 
outside the door. See the lines marked 70 on Map No. 10. 

70. World-famed Monastery and T>ogs, — Great 
St. Bernard Pass 

Those of us who have seen the way in which dogs of the 
St. Bernard breed can be taught to perform tricks for 
public exhibition, can readily understand how great their 
intelligence is and how much they must add in the way 



THE ST. BERNARD MONASTERY 



215 



of companionship to the lonely lives of the men here in 
this mountain monastery. At present the animals are 
not pure bred, but have Newfoundland blood. However, 
they are fine fellows all the same. The men can stay here 
only a limited number of years, for the severity of the 
winter cold and the extreme rarity of the air together 
wear out a constitution before long, and after a term of 
ten or twelve years' service a man has to go down to Aosta 
on the Italian side, or Martigny on the French side, to 
save his constitution from a breakdown. The house here 
is a favorite resting-place for travellers. It is not luxu- 
rious nor elegant in itself, but there is a certain charm 
about the picturesque traditions of the spot, and the hos- 
pitality is very kindly. One feels like paying well for it; 
but, as there is no fixed charge, the way in which one's 
bill is settled is by putting money into the brethrens' 
alms-box. 

We are now looking toward the west. Behind us and 
to our right is the road leading up from the Ehone and 
Bourg St. Pierre. In front of us the ancient road winds 
down to the right towards the plains of Italy. The moun- 
tains ahead of us are Italian territory. 

To get a better idea of the situation of the monastery 
in relation to the mountain walls up here on this high 
pass, we might go down to the shore of a little lake which 
lies nestled in a hollow of the hills a few rods away on 
our left. Eefer to Map No. 10, and you find the stand- 
point numbered 71, just a bit west of number 70. The 
direction of the red lines shows that we are to look back 



216 SWITZEKLAND THBOUGH THE STEKEOSCOPE 



to the Hospice (Hosp. on the map) and still farther to the 
Grand Combin, many miles to the northeast. 

71. Great St. Bernard Pass, Lake and Monastery- 
looking northeast, — Grand Combin in distance 

It is the west end of the Monastery building which we 
see from here. The door near which we saw the dogs a 
few minutes ago is in that side of the monastery building 
which we see. We were then looking out along this slope 
on our left here. That is the Grand Combin towering 
up behind the monastery, nearly as far away as Bourg St. 
Pierre. 

How hard and bare and cold the mountain outlines 
look! This lake is sometimes frozen over on a summer 
morning. If the spot is lonely now, what must it be in 
the depth of winter, when the snow in the roads comes up 
to the tops of the telegraph poles? And if it is lonely in 
winter in 1902, what must it have been hundreds of years 
ago, when the first monks came up here and built their 
little shelter in order to help save the lives of travellers 
who were obliged to go over the pass? It was no summer- 
hotel frivolity for them, but very grim and serious busi- 
ness. Monasteries in some parts of Switzerland did 
degenerate in the course of their history into places of 
too luxurious ease and comfort; but up here on the St. 
Bernard the monks have been so busy defending them- 
selves against the weather and looking out for poor fel- 
lows who needed to share their roof and fire, that they 
have kept up the traditions of their noble purpose in com- 



THE ST. BEKNAKD MONASTEEY 



217 



ing here. Ever since the ninth century monks have lived 
on the St. Bernard, while others of the same Augustine 
brotherhood do a similar work over on the Simplon Pass. 
There was once, years before the monks came, a Eoman 
temple to Jupiter standing not far from the present site 
of the monastery. The brothers will show you some relics 
of the Eoman building in their little museum. 

Some distance farther away from the hospice, to the 
left or east, we can get a fine view of the western side of 
the Mont Blanc range. The spot from which we are to 
look is marked 72 on the little map, No. 10. Consult 
Map 1 also, in order to see just where Mont Blanc stands 
in relation to the St. Bernard. 

72. Western Side of Mont Blanc, from Col de Fenetre, 
near Great St. Bernard Bass 

The peaks that we see there just beyond these steep 
sidelong slopes are about twelve miles away at the west. 
Just see how jagged and broken the rocks are here, where 
they have been ploughed over by avalanches and splin- 
tered by the grinding of glaciers that some time passed 
over their surface. Imagine with what tremendous force 
a glacier would scrape over rocks like these, if it were 
even two or three hundred feet deep, sliding down a slope 
at this angle! No wonder the ledges are split and rent. 

We shall go over close to that Mont Blanc range, and 
even look off from some of those very heights; but first 
we will make a little detour still farther to the west in 
order to get a glimpse of Geneva and its lake. 



LAKE GENEVA 



You remember how Lake Geneva or Lake Leman lies 
at the western end of Switzerland bordering on Savoy. 
The region all round the lake is full of most enchanting 
landscapes and rich in historic and literary associations 
beyond any other spot in Switzerland; but this time we 
will stay for only a very few glimpses of the beautiful 
places to be seen along the shore. One spot which of 
course we cannot afford to miss is the Castle of Chillon, 
where the hero of Byron's famous poem spent five years 
in a dungeon. Map No. 1 shows how standpoints 73, 74, 
75 are located near the eastern end of the lake. 

73. The Ancient Castle of Chillon— Celebrated Prison 
of Bonivard, — Lake Geneva 

For over a thousand years this building has been used 
as a prison. As far back as 830 Louis le Debonnaire im- 
prisoned here a refractory abbot. Here, also, in the four- 
teenth century Jews were tortured and burned because of 
a charge that they had poisoned the wells of Christians. 

The most famous of all the captives that ever were 
shut up inside those walls was the Swiss patriot Boni- 
vard, the prior and librarian of St. Victor, in Geneva. 
In the sixteenth century the Duke of Savoy attempted 

218 



THE PEISONEK OF CHILLON 



219 



to drive out the Genevese Huguenots. Bonivard op- 
posed the duke, maintaining the freedom of the 
Swiss, but he also urged upon his countrymen the 
necessity of being reasonable and conservative in their 
movement against the old church. So far-sighted and 
clear-headed a man, able to see both sides of a question, 
could satisfy neither side. He was seized by the duke 
and thrown into a dungeon here at Chillon, chained to a 
pillar below the level of the lake, where the only exercise 
possible was pacing back and forth a distance of about 
three feet. You can see the groove in the stone floor 
now, — a groove worn nearly two inches deep by his foot- 
steps going back and forth, back and forth for six long 
years. In 1536 the Genevese defeated the Duke of Savoy, 
the prison was taken and Bonivard's cell was thrown 
open. "You are free," they told him. His first word 
was, "And Geneva? " 

" Chillon ! Thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar, for 'twas trod 
Until his very steps have left a trace, 

Worn as if the cold pavement were a sod, 
By Bonivard! May none those marks efface; 
For they appeal from tyranny to God." 

It is interesting now, in the light of later history, to re- 
call what the old prior said to the early promoters of the 
movement since known as the Eeformation. 

"It is to be wished without doubt that the evil should be 
cast out of our midst provided the good enters. You burn to 
reform our church; certainly it needs it; but how can you 
reform it deformed as you are? You complain that the monks 
and priests are buffoons, and you are buffoons; that they are 
gamblers and drunkards, and you are the same. . . • 



220 SWITZERLAND THROUGH -THE STEREOSCOPE 

If you trust me, do one of two things : if you wish to remain 
deformed as you are, do not wonder that others are like you ; 
or if you wish to reform them, begin by showing them how." 

There is a promontory directly behind us, from which 
we can get a general view of this part of the lake, seeing 
the old prison in its relation to the eastern end of the 
waters. You see by the way in which Chillon is located 
on the map that the lake waters extend off to the west, 
that is, to the right of our next standpoint, No. 74, and 
that, as we look off from point 74, between the lines 
branching toward the south, the mountains of the Ber- 
nese Oberland, the Jungfrau, the Wetterhorn, the 
Schreckhorn, and those other peaks that we remember 
so well, will be at our left. 

74. Lake Geneva and the Dent dn Midi, from the 
Village of Glion 

You remember that, when we were over by Lake Lu- 
cerne, we thought how deep the lake waters must be, 
judging from the steepness of the mountains surrounding 
it, and that the hollow filled by the waters must be very 
narrow in proportion to its other dimension. Here, 
again, we can readily see how the waters of Lake Geneva 
must be, as the geologists tell us, of tremendous depth. 
Byron put the thing in beautifully poetic rather than 
scientific phrase: 

" Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls. 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow; 
Thus much the fathom-line was sent 
From Chillon's snow-white battlement." 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 



221 



Do you see the prison-castle down there, standing on the 
edge of the lake at the extremity of that point beyond the 
village? The town between us and the prison is Veytaux, 
and Villeneuve lies along the shore at the other side of the 
point by Chillon. All along the lake shore you see the 
hillsides are dotted with beautiful villas, the summer 
homes of rich and notable people from all parts of Europe. 
We can catch glimpses of the buildings here and there 
among the trees. 

Away over beyond Villeneuve do you notice how 
the lake is being gradually filled in, somewhat as that 
little space where Interlaken stands had been filled in 
by the streams coming down from the Lauterbrunnen 
valley (Stereograph 23)? The agency here is of ex- 
actly the same kind, though it works on a larger scale; 
for, you remember, it is at this end of the lake that the 
Ehone enters, bringing down contributions from its own 
valley extending all the way from the Furka Pass. You 
recall how we looked down from the Furka Pass into the 
very beginning of the Rhone valley (Stereograph 48). 
Some of the waters which the Ehone pours into this end 
of the lake come down from the Matterhorn and the 
Weisshorn, from Monte Rosa and the Breithorn and the 
Lyskamm. A part of the earth that is filling in that 
end of the lake yonder may have swept down the 
Visp valley under the shadow of the Riffelalp, where 
we stood looking down upon the houses of the vil- 
lage on its banks (Stereograph 64). Some of the stones 
and gravel may have come from the mountains 



222 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

above Saas-Fee; some perhaps came down in horrible 
avalanches over the slopes of those mountains that shut in 
our view when we looked west from the Furka Pass 
(Stereograph 47). Some have come down from the Dent 
du Midi that we see now standing big and dim and ghostly 
to the south. It is a steady increase that the gravel de- 
posit is making, and perhaps some time, in the course of 
ages to come, the lake may be quite filled up, leaving one 
enormous fertile valley in its place. 

We are just now looking south. The main body of the 
lake is away off at our right, curving round toward the 
southwest. The views all along the shore are very pic- 
turesque and beautiful. Let us turn around and take one 
look off towards the west along the northern shore of the 
lake. See red lines marked 75 on Map No. 1. 

75. Beautiful Village of Montreux on Lake Geneva, 
Switzerland 

It is a part of Montreux at the foot of the hill where we 
are standing. On the shore at the farther side of that 
little bay, — the part of the shore where those tall poplars 
are reflected in the water, — is Clarens, associated with 
memories of Eousseau. Vevey is away over at the foot of 
those most distant hills, though we can hardly see it 
through the haze that covers the shore of the lake. Lau- 
sanne is still farther away toward the west. All the towns 
along here are favorite summer resorts with beautiful gar- 
dens and fine promenades along the lake shore. Byron 



THE SHOEES OF LAKE GENEVA 



223 



spent a great deal of time in the region about Lake Geneva; 
Voltaire, Dumas, Hume, Gibbon, Madame de Stael and 
a host of other famous people have lived here and made 
long visits here. Almost everybody has been impressed 
by the beauty of the country, especially since the days of 
Eousseau, when both French and English began to open 
their eyes to the loveliness of natural landscape; but 
Madame de Stael lived perhaps just a little too early, at all 
events she was too much absorbed in things purely of the 
intellect to care for what we enjoy in a scene like this. 
Was it not she who declared she would not open her 
window to see the Bay of Naples? It seems the most 
natural thing in the world that a man of Kousseau's tem- 
perament, living in a paradise like this, should have be- 
come, as he did, a worshipper of nature. We all owe him 
and the lake poets of England a debt of gratitude for what 
they did to help all the rest of us to see nature with open 
eyes. 

The country must have changed a great deal in the hun- 
dred years since Kousseau's day. See those huge blocks of 
modern hotels down there in the town. There were no 
such swarms of tourists in the eighteenth century. And 
how beautifully kept the roads seem to be, — as neat and 
orderly as a Frenchwoman in a careful toilet. All this part 
of Switzerland is in fact as much French as Swiss. There 
is a certain dainty coquetry about these little towns along 
the lake shore which is quite Parisian in its character. 
Geneva, itself, you know, is called the " Bostonian Paris." 



224 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

One more look at those exquisite tree reflections be- 
fore we turn away. These slopes upward from the lake 
are so gentle as to seem almost tame in comparison with 
the mountains among which we have been journeying, and 
the curves of the shore are so suave that the landscape 
might seem to have an almost insipid prettiness about it if 
it were not for the occasional strong, straight lines that 
rest our eyes by giving them something decisive on which 
to depend. Is it not the straightness and abruptness of 
those points that project out into the water beyond 
Clarens which make that part of the lake so pleasant to 
look at from the hill here? And see again how beauti- 
fully the increasing haziness of the distant hills carries out 
the gradual lightening of the color in surrounding things, 
as we look farther and farther away from the things near 
us. See; the color of these trees at our feet is distinctly 
darker, a good deal darker than the color of those grassy 
fields down below. What with the strong light, the vague- 
ness of distance and the thin veil of haze, all we see at the 
right of those projecting points seems a good deal paler, 
lighter and more ethereal. The hills above Vevey, more 
thickly veiled, melt hazily into the distance; then see how 
much paler still the next headland appears. We can 
hardly make out where the vapory hill leaves off and the 
vapory air begins, — distances over water, or near water, 
are made so much more beautiful by the haziness of a sum- 
mer atmosphere. 

The sunsets over Lake Geneva are famous throughout 
the world. The coloring of the skies is often wonderfully 



SUNSET, LAKE GENEVA 



225 



brilliant and there are so many picturesque craft plying 
about the lake that one sees most striking effects in their 
hulls and sails against the sky and the water. 

76. Sunset, Lake Geneva 

These are what they call " lateen 99 sails, — a favorite 
fashion about this part of the lake for little freight boats. 
The rigging is quite different from anything that one sees 
in small coasting vessels about our own shores. 

After the sun goes out of sight below those hills, he 
lights up the harbors on the Bay of Biscay with sunsets 
like these, and plunges under the great, wide horizon 
curves of the Atlantic. Montreal is about due west from 
here, in this same latitude. 

All along that northern shore of Lake Geneva there are 
beautiful towns. We should find a feast for our eyes on 
every hill and every point following about the shore; but 
now we must pass directly across to Geneva itself at the 
southwest end of the lake. You remember how it is sit- 
uated, close to the French frontier. We can stay for only 
a single glimpse of the city because we have still another 
excursion before us. Our one glimpse shall be from the 
very end of the town, just where the Ehone comes out 
from the southwest end of the lake on its new journey 
toward the Mediterranean. 



226 SWITZEELAND THBOUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



77. Lovely Geneva,— Bridges crossing the Hhone 

Just a little glimpse of "Bostonian Paris," or " Protes- 
tant Some," as they sometimes call it. Those buildings 
over there look very like both Boston and Paris. The 
prettiness and gayety of the place are like the great 
French capital; the rather severely intellectual character 
of the town, with its fine university and its traditions of 
famous men, reminds one of the learned and demure little 
city over in New England. Such a list of famous people 
are associated with Geneva! Voltaire and Eousseau come 
to mind here many a time. Calvin's memory is of course 
one of the most important and most significant. Topffer 
lived here, Monnier, De Saussure, Sismondi and Amiel of 
the famous journal. That little island over there with 
the trees and garden-seats is Eousseau' s island. There is 
a statue to Eousseau just out of sight among the trees. 
This is the Ehone whose waters are at our feet. The old 
part of the city is chiefly at the right, the newer part at 
Che left, and there are other bridges besides these connect- 
ing the two districts. The Pont des Bergues is this bridge 
directly below us, and the one just beyond Eousseau's 
island is the Pont du Mont Blanc. Sea-gulls come away 
up here in the winter and it is one of the customs of the 
town for people to feed the birds from that second bridge. 

We all know Geneva watches and Geneva music-boxes; 
that street which leads from the end of the Mont Blanc 
bridge straight down toward the lake has some of the most 
beautiful shops in the city, — those most frequented by 



GENEVA AND THE RHONE 



227 



travellers with money to spend. Geneva might be a still 
greater manufacturing city than it is at present, for the 
water-power of the Ehone could do an almost limitless 
amount of work. It is used now to a large extent; but 
the business of Geneva might be much more voluminous 
were it not for the severe, protective policy adopted by 
France. 



MONT BLANC 

From different points in and about Geneva one can see, 
away off to the east, Mont Blanc towering huge and white 
against the sky. You know Mont Blanc really stands in 
French territory, not within the geographical limits of 
Switzerland (General Map No. 1 shows just how the 
boundary line runs between the two countries); but no 
visit to Switzerland could seem geographically complete 
if we did not get some near views of this most famous 
of all the Alpine peaks. Let us go over, then, from Geneva 
to the little village of Chamonix which lies just under the 
mountain. You see on the General Map a section about 
Mont Blanc marked out for reproduction by itself as Map 
No. 11, " The Chain of Mont Blanc/' Notice that the sec- 
tion is not made like the others, with its sides facing directly 
the four points of the compass; it is taken out obliquely, so 
that the top of our special Map No. 11 will he towards the 
northwest, the right-hand side toward the northeast. Now 
turn to Map No. 11 itself and we have the same region 
very satisfactorily enlarged. Chamonix is near the mid- 
dle of the map from left to right, and the point where we 
are to take our first stand is marked there 78. Trace the 
red lines which run toward the southwest and you see 
they take in the summit of Mont Blanc with a large area 

228 



THE BALMAT MONUMENT IN CHAMONIX 229 



of glaciers and rocks between. We must evidently expect 
to find a good deal of the section we are to see taken up by 
broad expanses of snow and ice. 

78. Balmat, First to Ascend 3Iont Blanc pointing out 
His Boute to De Saussure ; Chamonioo 

We are standing in the village square of Chamonix near 
the church, and looking a little south of west. The in- 
scription on this monument is quite plain, " Erected in 
1887 by the cooperation of the French, Swiss, Italian and 
English Alpine Clubs, the Appalachian Club of Boston, 
the Tourists' Society of Austria and the Academy of 
Sciences, Paris." The group of figures is perhaps a little 
too commonplace in its realism to be really great as a work 
of art, but it is at least appropriate as a memorial to the 
two men whose courage and persistence did so much to 
make this giant mountain accessible to other people ever 
since their day. 

But we must get in mind the more general features of 
the mountain mass beyond. The peak furthest to the 
right is the Aiguille du Gouter, the rounded dome directly 
before us is the Dome du Gouter, while we just make out 
the summit of Mont Blanc away up yonder on our extreme 
left. The mass of ice that stretches far down the moun- 
tain-side is the Bossons Glacier. The two great rocks that 
rear themselves above the snow near the beginning of that 
glacier, and in line with the hollow between the Dome du 
Gouter and Mont Blanc, are the Grands Millets, famous 



230 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



in Mont Blanc mountain-climbing. We are to stand on 
those rocks later. The usual route to the summit leads 
right by them. The mountain shoulder beyond the 
glacier, with snow in irregular ridges near its top, is 
bounded on the farther side by the Taconnaz Glacier, 
which we shall see after a while. 

It was only a little over a hundred years ago that the 
first ascent was made, and a chamois hunter of Ghamonix, 
Jacques Balmat, was the first to reach the summit. He 
was a man of twenty-five, full of vigor and determination. 
The Genevese naturalist, De Saussure, had offered a 
reward to anyone who could discover a practicable route to 
the top of the mountain. Balmat and another man went 
up as far as those two black rocks, the Grands Mulets, 
which we have already pointed out beyond the long, steep 
slope of the Bossons Glacier; and from that point he 
made the ascent alone. He told the elder Dumas about 
his experience a good many years afterward when he was 
an old man. He had suffered frightfully from the cold 
and was nearly overcome by the exhaustion of climbing. 
He had been painfully toiling up and up for hours and was 
walking along with his head bowed down when, all at once, 
looking up, he realized that he had reached the summit. 
He looked all about him, trembling with excitement and 
fearing that his first impression had deceived him and that 
he should find some other dome or peak or ridge nearby 
which stood up higher than the point he had attained; 
but it was actually true, — the summit was reached and he 
had no more climbing. It was a spot on the earth's sur- 



balmat's fikst ascent 



231 



face where no living creature had ever been before; not 
even the chamois nor the eagle had been so high. He 
was absolutely alone, no other human creature within 
sight or sound. It seemed to him that the whole world at 
his feet belonged to him. As he said: " I was the king of 
Mont Blanc; I was the statue of that immense pedestal." 

Another impressive view of the mountain can be had 
if we go up on the Brevent, west of the village, sharply to 
our right as we stand here, and look across this valley of 
Chamonix and the river Arve. It is a hard climb up the 
steep slopes of the Brevent. One can walk up in about 
three hours or go up on the back of a mule. There are 
little restaurants and inns high up on the slopes to refresh 
travellers after their stout exertion. By the way, many 
mountain-climbers say that when one is toiling up a hard 
slope of rocks or ice it is sometimes a good plan to carry a 
small stone in the mouth. There is no occult charm in 
the stone itself, but under those circumstances one holds 
his mouth shut and so keeps his throat from becoming 
dried by the rarefied air, consequently he suffers much less 
from thirst than he would if he were tempted to open the 
lips every now and then. 

Look at the map once more, Map No. 11, to make sure 
that the location of the Brevent is clear in your mind. 
Note the mountain ridge near the upper margin of the 
map, bounding the valley of Chamonix on the north- 
west. Our next standpoint is given by the apex of the two 
red lines on that ridge near the number 79, somewhat to 
the left of Chamonix. 



232 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

The guide lines indicate, you see, that our view to the 
right will be very short indeed, — cut off suddenly by some- 
thing near us, while we shall be able to look toward the 
left, a distance of nearly seven miles in a straight line, to 
the summit of the Mont Blanc range. 

79. Frightful Alpine Precipices,— loofting from 
Aiguille Houge (fir event) to Mont Blanc 

As we stand now we are fully a mile above the little 
village of Chamonix and the bed of the Arve. We are 
over 8,200 feet above the sea-level. That is the summit of 
Mont Blanc du Tacul which we see in the distance to the 
left. Mont Blanc itself is more to the right, though much 
of the detail of the slopes on either side, and between us 
and the dome, is covered by those drifting clouds. Every- 
body quotes here Byron's familiar lines about the moun- 
tain: 

" Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains, 
They crowned him long ago, 
On a throne of rocks in a robe of clouds, 
With a diadem of snow." 

The great mass of ice sliding down the mountain- 
side is the Bossons Glacier again. We get here a better 
idea of the tremendous fall of the ice toward the valley 
below. Just to the right of this glacier we see the ridges 
of snow on the mountain .shoulder pointed out from 
Chamonix (Stereograph 78), and a little farther up we 
catch a glimpse of one of the Grands Mulets rocks. 



MONT BLANC FROM THE BEEVENT 



[233 



Please admire the cool head and steady nerves of the 
guide up there on that high cliff. He is as little likely 
to be dizzy as an eagle. It is a truly wonderful command 
of nerve and muscle that the guides attain, spending their 
lives as they do in accurate adjustments of muscle and 
delicate balancing of weight. They learn how to handle 
their own bodies with as marvellous precision and accuracy 
as that with which a chemist handles the materials in his 
laboratory. 

We must do more climbing ourselves and get other 
views of the " monarch " from a point just a little further 
down. A bit more to the south we can see certain of the 
Mont Blanc glaciers much more clearly, that is, we can if 
the clouds keep out of our way. Note carefully the two 
red lines marked 80 which branch toward the south, di- 
rectly toward Mont Blanc, from near our present position 
on the Brevent. 

80. Mont Blanc, Monarch of European Mountains, 
from the Brevent 

The summit is that smoothly rounding white dome just 
opposite where we stand. This whole range that we see 
now is called by the one general name of Mont Blanc, but 
several of the peaks which make up the mountain mass 
have names of their own. It will be specially interesting 
to identify some of the details now, because, when we 
leave the Brevent here, we are to pass over and ascend the 
mountain itself, taking successive standpoints on the way 
up, looking across and upwards and down, exactly as Bal- 



234 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

mat and the other mountain-climbers have done before u& 
We shall make a close acquaintance with many of the 
features of the mountain that we see now at a distance, 
and we shall remind ourselves again and again of what we 
are able to see from here and the way in which particular 
features of Mont Blanc are related to this whole. 

The glacier that we see at the left here is the Bossons 
again. We shall pass over some of those very ice ridges 
and watch the guides cutting steps in the solid ice. Then 
you see that other glacier farther to the right between the 
two ridges of rock? That is the Taconnaz Glacier. Fol- 
lowing up the line of this dark mountain ridge which 
separates the Taconnaz and Bossons glaciers, do you see 
still higher those small dark points projecting out of the 
snow and ice, apparently rather near the base of still 
higher cliffs? Those are the Grands Mulets rocks; they 
are themselves cliffs of very respectable size, as we shall 
see when we get nearer to them; and there are impressive 
views we shall get from the shelter hut which is built on 
the larger of the two rocks. The map shows them plainly. 
Look at the map again (indeed we should keep studying 
it at intervals in close connection with what we see from 
every standpoint on this Mont Blanc expedition). You 
see the map sets down that long, steep rocky ridge be- 
tween the two glaciers as the Montagne de la Cote. 

The precipice standing above and to the left of the 
Mulets is the Mont Maudit. That stands 14,669 feet 
high. Then comes the summit of Mont Blanc, the white 
dome at the right, just above two dark, rocky cliffs. The 



FIRST ATTEMPTS OF BALMAT 



235 



Aiguille du Gouter is that sharply pyramidal peak at our 
extreme right, and the rounding elevation above the 
Glacier de Taconnaz is the Dome du Gouter. We should 
get a perfectly distinct idea in our minds of the situation 
of these points, for it will add a great deal to the clearness 
of our understanding of what we shall see later. The 
route taken up the mountain is somewhat circuitous, and 
we shall see these different landmarks from new points of 
view. 

One of Balmaf s first attempts to climb the mountain 
took him, you remember, only as far as those black rocks 
at the head of the Taconnaz Glacier. It was there he 
stayed alone all night without any shelter, nearly blind 
from exposure to the weather; but a few weeks later he 
tried again, and actually succeeded in reaching the summit. 
Nothing serves to discourage a man with the inborn 
instinct for mountaineering. The successful ascent was 
made by starting from Ohamonix late in the afternoon. 
Balmat and another man, Dr. Paccard, camped overnight 
at the farther end of this dark ridge before us at the left, 
the Montagne de la Cote. Early in the morning they 
started on again and bore off to the right across the 
Taconnaz Glacier. Ascents are often made now by bear- 
ing off much farther toward the right than Balmat went, 
going out, in fact, pretty well toward the Aiguille du 
Gouter. Balmat camped a second night on a little snow 
plateau away up above the Mulets, and almost to the 
Rochers Rouges (R. Rouges on the map). Those are the 
two dark rock masses that you see away up next to the 



236 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

summit of Mont Blanc. They are not, however, so very 
near the summit in real fact. There are fully two hours' 
climbing beyond that point before the highest altitude is 
reached. 

Although Mont Blanc itself is the centre of interest in 
any view round about Chamonix, still there are other 
peaks which have nobility and grandeur of their own. If 
we go over just a bit further to the east here on the Bre- 
vent, and look almost directly eastward, to our left, we 
have a fine view of one of the most picturesque neighbor 
peaks in this whole valley. Find the lines marked 81 on 
the map and you see that we shall be looking directly 
across the little valley of the Arve where Chamonix lies, 
across the glacier known as the Mer de Glace, and on to a 
row of peaks standing up out of the Argentiere Glacier. 

81. Climbing the Heights above Valley of Chamonix, — 
Aiguille Verte in the distance 

See how tiny the few scattered houses look, away down 
there in the valley; they are in the outskirts of Cha- 
monix, but the main village is not in sight from here. 
It is the Montanvert which stands directly opposite us at 
the other side of the valley. (See Map 11.) That is a 
favorite excursion point for tourists because it gives a fine 
view of the Mer de Glace over beyond. It is a part of 
the celebrated glacier which we see lying between the 
Montanvert and the Aiguille Verte, the lofty peak that 
towers above all else. We shall go up on the Montanvert 



MEB DE GLACE FROM THE BREVENT 237 

presently for ourselves and look down upon the famous ice 
stream. It looks from here at first glance as if that sharp 
peak over yonder were practically all one mass, but it is 
not so. The steep, sharp triangle of rock which has com- 
paratively little snow on it is partially distinct from the 
other. It is the Aiguille du Dru, and you can see by the 
map that there is an arm of the glacier separating it from 
the other cliffs. The Argentiere Glacier comes down be- 
yond the ridge of the Aiguille Verte; and that is the peak 
of the Argentiere which stands up steeply in the distance 
at the extreme left. 

We shall see the Mer de G-lace from two or three dif- 
ferent standpoints by and by. Among the others we shall 
get one view from a point along the side of those steep 
cliffs beyond the glacier, just above the head of this man 
who is climbing up the nearer rocks. 

We can readily imagine how the spring floods must 
swell the little river down there in the valley below. Not 
many years ago the waters were so high that they carried 
away every bridge but one in the whole length of the 
valley. 

Such a height as this, where we stand now, is really 
more satisfactory in point of beautiful views than are the 
greater heights like Mont Blanc's summit. Now we can 
appreciate the beauty as well as the marvel of this Alpine 
world; but when one is fifteen thousand feet up in the air, 
and merely looks down on neighbors like the Brevent and 
the Montanvert, they are naturally foreshortened into ir- 
regular humps. It is like looking down from a church 



238 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



steeple on the heads of men in the street — the experience 
is immensely worth while in its own way, but things near 
by do not show their real beauty. 

Doesn't this seem as if we had wings? 

Now instead of spending more time looking off at these 
distant peaks from the Brevent, let us go down to 
Chamonix and begin the ascent of Mont Blanc. We will 
follow the ordinarily approved route from the village, 
going up across the hills at the southeast of the river 
until we strike the Bossons Glacier. As soon as we reach 
the glacier, all the climbing has to be done for some little 
distance on solid ice, and for quite a portion of the way 
steps have to be cut for a foothold. The heat of the sun, 
the deposit of new snow and many other things serve to 
obliterate steps after they are once made, so the labor of 
the guides in cutting serves only a temporary purpose. 
Find No. 82 on the map. It is near the foot of the glacier 
east of the Montague de la Cote, and we can look up the 
glacier at that point and watch the men at work ahead of 
us on one of the sharp ridges of ice which make up this 
enormous stream. 



82. Ascent of Mont Blanc, — Cutting Steps in the 
Crystal Ice of the Bossons Glacier 

We are only at the beginning, and this is comparatively 
an easy matter, yet the possibilities of disaster are even 
now thick on either hand. Holes and cracks like those 
that we see here may, you know, have any frightful depth, 



A TBAGEDY OF THE BOSSONS GLACIEB 239 



If one sees them and can avoid them, all well and good; 
but sometimes the mouth of a crevasse is covered by a 
light snow insufficient to hold a man's weight. 

An accident with a peculiarly dramatic sequel occurred 
on this glacier eighty years ago. Five men who were at- 
tempting the ascent were swept away by an avalanche and 
buried so deeply that it was impossible to recover their 
bodies. Later, Professor Forbes came here and made in- 
vestigations as to the rate of movement of the ice mass. 
He calculated that, according to its rate of motion at that 
time, it would carry the bodies of the five men down to a 
certain point in the valley below in about forty years. 
Forty years later certain relatives, and some scientific men 
who were eager to test the accuracy of Professor Forbes' 
reckoning, went to a spot away below us where the glacier 
melts, and there they actually did discover the bodies of 
the men, one of them still recognizable, after forty years' 
burial under the ice. 

You see how our guides are protected as well as may be 
against the danger of any individual fall. They use their 
rope in the same way as that in which we saw men using 
it over on a glacier near the Jungfrau (Stereograph 32). 
The rule is to keep the rope neither very slack nor very 
loose. There is besides another use for the rope in case 
of emergency. If one member of a party is swept off over 
a cliff or down into a crevasse, there must be some means 
of lowering another man to aid him. For this reason an 
extra length is always carried by experienced guides. The 
men have their boot-soles specially prepared with nails to 



240 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



prevent them from slipping, and their alpenstocks are in- 
dispensable. In this particular case no special point is 
being made of a climbing costume, but sometimes moun- 
tain-climbers protect their heads from both freezing wind 
and blinding sunshine by black linen masks. The glare is 
something frightful when the sun is bright, and has 
actually caused blindness where the necessary precautions 
were neglected. 

This is slow work; it sometimes takes a minute to cut a 
single step. But, though that is a tiresome task, the man 
who is cutting the steps has really the most comfortable 
part of the task, for it is likely to be cold work when one 
merely stands and waits. It was while crossing a glacier 
over east of here, near the Argentiere, that the English 
mountain-climber, Edward Whymper, stamping to keep 
his feet warm while his guides chopped steps in the ice, 
broke through the ceiling of a great ice cavern and nar- 
rowly escaped with his life. The one who stands and 
waits can, however, give his mind to watching for the ap- 
proach of avalanches, and that is a necessary precaution 
too, for in an ascent like this there is never any real secur- 
ity against the sudden descent of rocks, ice or snow from 
above. Guides come to have almost infallible judgment 
in regard to the reliability or treachery of the snow, and 
they can usually predict, with the keen accuracy of an 
American Indian or a Sherlock Holmes, the probable 
route of the avalanche which is next coming. Still, there 
are surprises always in the air. 



TUNNEL IN THE BOSSONS GLACIER 241 



You remember how this glacier looked as we saw it 
from the Brevent (Stereograph 80)? 

There is one spot where a tunnel has been bored into 
the mass for a distance of eighty-five yards. It is a some- 
what ghostly experience to walk in under the ice, as the 
tunnel invites us to do, but it is practically quite safe, and 
it gives one a new sensation to think of being down in the 
depths of this solid river. 

83. Tunnel in the Glacier des Bossons, Mont Blanc 

If we could look more closely at the ice we should see a 
good deal of very curious veining and coloring. The 
geologists say it is caused by the squeezing together and 
compacting of glaciers of different origin, and by the com- 
pacting of ice with snow, though the snow itself has prac- 
tically been since turned into ice. Then the opening of 
a crack or crevasse and its filling and freezing again cause 
variations in the color and beautiful veined streaks when 
one sees it in section. 

There is a point up a little farther on the mountain-side 
where we can make a few minutes* stay to look off over 
the further extent of the Bossons toward the Aiguille and 
Dome du Gouter. Think how those looked when we saw 
them from the Brevent (Stereograph 80), and remember 
that we are now but a very small part of the way up the 
mountain slope. 

Consult the map and find Pierre Pointue on the ridge at 
the east side of the glacier and still higher up than the 
ice-tunnel, at the beginning of the red lines marked 84. 



242 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



We will wait there a few minutes to look off ahead up the 
way that remains to be travelled. 

84. Ascent of Mont Blanc,— halting with Guides at 
Pierre Pointue, — looking up JBossons Glacier 

It takes about two hours to climb from Chamonix up to 
the point where we are now. The Brevent is just about 
over our right shoulder. There is a house here at Pierre 
Pointue where one can find rest and refreshment, and its 
lights can be seen twinkling at night by those who look up 
from the Chamonix hotels. The Chamonix lights can, of 
course, be seen up here in their turn. 

The guide who stands at the right of this little group is 
a good fellow, one of the thoroughly reliable men in this 
region, Joseph Simond by name. The one who is directly 
facing us is another first-rate man — Jules Simond. As a 
matter of fact the Simond name is very common among 
men of this profession round about Chamonix. Whole 
families, brothers, uncles and cousins, go into the busi- 
ness, and names are duplicated in a rather bewildering 
way. 

A few years ago Frances Eidley Havergal, the English- 
woman whose hymns are quite widely known, travelled 
here in Switzerland and went up Mont Blanc as far as the 
Grands Mulets. She wrote a letter home just after her 
return to the hotel, and in speaking about the ascent from 
Pierre Pointue, where we are now, she said: " If you want 
a good idea of it, study any of those snow stereoscopes 
with people crossing crevasses and threading among blocks 



THE VIEW FROM PIERRE POINTUE 



243 



and pinnacles of ice and looking down into the gulfs. 
They give an excellent idea of it. I could have fancied I 
had got into a stereoscope box in a dream." 

Now we will follow on over the very route that made 
this impression on Miss Havergal's mind. That ice- 
pyramid away at the right is the Aiguille du Gouter, and 
the round cap is the Dome du Gouter. This side of the 
Aiguille du Gouter we see again the upper part of the 
Montagne de la Cote, with its lines of rock and snow, and 
protruding above the snow, in the distance, directly in line 
with the head of J oseph Simond, are the Grands Mulets, 
and farther to the left, in the distance, directly in line 
with the head of Jules Simond, we see the rounded sum- 
mit of Mont Blanc, the place we are bound for. We will 
proceed with these guides on over the Bossons Glacier, 
which we see straight ahead of us (note the irregularity of 
its surface), and up to the hut at the Grands Mulets. 

Let us go back to our standpoint on the Brevent 
(Stereograph 80), where the rocks of the Grands Mulets 
show like little boulders standing up out of the snow. 
What we purpose to do now is to cross the glacier as we 
see it on the extreme left in Stereograph 80, moving to- 
ward the right. The point where we shall stand next is 
numbered 85. It is on the map a little south of Pierre 
Pointue, and the radiating lines show that we shall be 
looking about southwest. We shall see the Aiguille du 
Gouter again at the extreme right and the Dome du 
Gouter towards the left. 



244 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



85. Ascent of Mont Blanc,— crossing Bossons Glacier 
Crevasses,— Grands Mulets Bocks, Dome and 
Aiguille du Gouter in distance 

It is only a mile and a half from here up to the Grands 
Mulets that we see upon our left, but it is slow travelling 
over the deep crevasses of the glacier, and in bad weather 
sometimes the passage absolutely cannot be made even 
by the most experienced guides. What the depth of snow 
and ice may be here nobody has tried to calculate accu- 
rately, but it is certainly many hundred feet. Those 
rocks that we see just ahead are practically the sharp 
peaks of outlying hills on the side of the mountain. Their 
summits come up just above the snow and ice in the same 
way that the summits of submarine mountains come up 
above the surface of the water and show as islands. 

This is evidently another place where it is wise to look 
before you leap. One of the most able of the British 
Alpine Club men said in a book on his Alpine tramps: * 
" I must say that I object to crawling on hands and knees 
across three or four feet of snow with a yawning chasm of 
unknown depth on each side. . . . There are few more 
unpleasant sensations, I should say, than when one's legs 
are dangling in space with unknown depths beneath and 
with one's elbows resting on supports which may at any 
moment prove as treacherous as the part which has 
already given way/' 



* Herbert Marsh; Two Seasons in Switzerland. 



SUMMEE TEMPERATURE ON MONT BLANC 245 

It is sometimes surprisingly warm when one is climbing 
here at midday under a summer sun; coats are often 
superfluous, and if it were not for the absurdity of the 
situation a sun-umbrella would be gratefully accepted. 
The guides keep a constant lookout, as they move along, 
for signs of avalanches either of rocks or of snow. Some- 
times, in a steeper climb than this, orders come sharply 
from the man in front calling for a sudden turn to the 
right or to the left, as the case may be. It is no time to 
question why. The order means that a rock is coming, or 
a snow-slide, and the safe thing is to obey the guide's 
orders as promptly as one's legs will allow. 

Now look again at the map and find a point a little 
higher up the mountain, farther southwest than our last 
standpoint; it is numbered 86; you see the apex of the 
red lines are near the Grands Mulets; we shall be looking 
westward, away from the summit. 

86. Ascent of Mont Blanc,— Ice Cliffs on the 
Bossons Glacier 

It is warm here now. Two of the guides have taken 
off their coats and are tramping along as if they were 
going over sun-baked grass or hot, fragrant pine needles 
instead of over a pavement of ice five or six hundred feet 
thick. Those masks that they wear to protect their eyes 
from the glare of the snow are certainly not ornamental, 
but they save a great amount of real danger to the eye- 
sight. The glare is actually so blinding that those who 



246 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



neglect taking masks or colored glasses (the guides say 
masks are the better) are sometimes laid up for days with 
inflamed eyes, and permanent disability has been the con- 
sequence of too long exposure. 

As we are looking toward the southwest the mountains 
in the distance must be in French Savoy, beyond the Val- 
ley Montjoie. Chamonix lies sharply off to our right. 

It is getting towards night, and we are to sleep at the 
hut on the Grands Mulets. We are almost there, and the 
refuge will be a welcome spot. Besides the fatigue of 
climbing and of crossing the crevasses on the way up, this 
deep surface snow makes walking wearisome. All the 
pleasure one gets in these Alpine ascents is thoroughly 
earned by hard work. 

When at last we reach the Grands Mulets we must look 
about in both directions, ahead towards the summit and 
back down towards Chamonix in the low valley. First 
we will climb *to the top of the steep little cliff of rock 
and look off toward the southwest before dark. On the 
map this next standpoint is given by the apex of the lines 
marked 87. Again we see by the one short line that our 
vision will be obstructed on our left. On the right we 
shall be able to see the Dome du Gouter. 

87. Ascent of Mont Blanc ,— looking from Grands 
Mulets Hut to Dome du Gouter 9 — End of First Day's 
Climb (Sunset) 

Now we are standing on the very summit of the tallest 
of those rocks which we saw from the Brevent away up 



EEFUGE HUT AT GKANDS MULETS 



247 



at the head of the Bossons Glacier (Stereograph 80). The 
steep Aiguille, which stands just ahead to the left, is put 
down on our map as you see. Over behind it must be the 
spot which the map calls the Petit Plateau. That huge, 
rounding mass, snow-covered except for one little patch 
of dark rock, is the Dome du Gouter, and the Grand 
Plateau, as they call it, is over at the left of the Dome, 
beyond the huge snow-bank. We shall go up farther to 
that Grand Plateau before long. 

The hut here on the Grands Mulets has been built for 
the benefit of travellers ascending the mountain. It be- 
longs to the commune of Chamonix, and the income from 
it is a public fund. It takes fully three hours to reach 
here from Pierre Pointue, and the charge of $2.50 for a 
night's lodging does not seem excessive. The wonder is 
how enough fuel, furniture and food can be brought up 
here to supply the wants of the tourists who take their 
turns in staying overnight. Not everybody does stay 
overnight; the ascent can be planned in a different way; 
but nearly everybody likes to come up here for over sun- 
set and to start out fresh in the morning for the climb to 
the summit. Since 1850 there have been about nine hun- 
dred ascents of the mountain. They keep a record down in 
Chamonix at the Guides' Bureau, and try to have the fig- 
ures include all the different excursions. The number 
varies, of course, from year to year, but there are likely 
to be from thirty to fifty during any ordinary season. 

In the morning" we shall leave the cliff on which we 
stand, and going down to that expanse of snow just ahead 



248 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

where the tracks show that a party have recently been 
over the route, we shall turn and look back past these 
rocks on which we stand and the refuge cabin down to- 
ward Chamonix in the valley below. 

Find the number 88 in a circle on the map, and then 
trace the two long red lines which branch from it, one to 
the upper and one to the right-hand map margin. We 
ought to get now a great sweep of the Chamonix Valley 
and the mountains beyond to the north. 

88. Ascent of Mont Blanc, — looJcing back (north) 
to the Grands Mulets Hut (10,007 feet) and 
Chamonix Valley 

You see how exactly that cliff of the Grands Mulets 
resembles the summit of some of the sharp-pointed moun- 
tains in this region? It is of precisely the same charac- 
ter as the Aiguilles that we saw when we were looking 
east across the Chamonix valley and the Mer de Glace 
(Stereograph 81). It is easy to see now that this is prob- 
ably an island in the enormous ice-river. How cozily that 
little cabin is settled there in the cleft of the precipice. 
The building had to be bolted to the rocks with the great- 
est security, for you can easily perceive how wind and 
storm must tear across this slope. We might fancy, at 
first thought, that it would be wiser to build the hut in 
some lower position under the lee of the rocks some- 
where; but, when we stop to think about it, remembering 
that avalanches are likely to go sliding down on either 
side of the rock at almost any time, we remember that it 



VIEW FEOM GRANDS MULETS 



249 



is much safer on the whole to be high up if only well 
anchored. 

It is too hazy for us to see clearly any details away 
down there in the valley, but you remember the Brevent 
is opposite us a little farther to the left. With care, 
we can make out part of the town of Chamonix 
down by the Arve in the valley. The mountains farther 
away are the northeast extension of the Brevent. We 
are looking in a direction almost the reverse of that of 
Stereograph 80, and we are looking, too, exactly at right 
angles to that of Stereograph 81, for the Aiguille Verte 
and the Mer de Glace are away off at our right as we stand 
now. 

Now we will turn about once more and proceed on the 
further ascent, for we are bound for the summit, and 
nothing short of that will satisfy us. A good many tour- 
ists find that the ascent to these Grands Mulets is all their 
courage can compass, but we are to see the whole route 
and even to look off from the very topmost height toward 
the Oberland and toward Monte Kosa. 

You remember that when we were at the refuge hut 
(Stereograph 87) we calculated the location of the Petit 
and Grand Plateaux. Now we are to move on up between 
these two plateaux. The lines marked 89 on the map 
show that our next standpoint is to be a few rods distant, 
from which we shall look over south-westward toward the 
Dome du Gouter, which we have already seen from so 
many different standpoints. 



250 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

89. Ascent of Mont Blanc,— a Mountain of Snow, 
between the Petit (11,926 feet) and Grand 
(13,000 feet) Blateauoc 

Now we see what a snow cornice is, and what horrible 
peril a man may run into when he ventures out on such a 
projecting shelf. If one were approaching from below, 
the shape of the cornice and its danger would be evident; 
but if he were to come on such a projecting mass from 
above, where it appears to be an innocent part of the gen- 
eral slope, it would be easy to advance far beyond the 
safety limit before realizing the facts of the ease. It looks 
from here as if that particular cornice were ready to break 
off in two pieces now, simply from its own weight. 

In 1866 an Englishman, a guide and two porters were 
going up this very route between the Mulets and the 
Grand Plateau when they were all swept off by an 
avalanche. Thirty years later they found the English- 
man's body away down at the lower part of the Bossons 
Glacier, and his watch was actually recovered near the 
same region only three years ago (1899). 

Do you recognize our guide who made so picturesque a 
silhouette away up on that cliff of the Brevent? His hat 
is unmistakable. Everybody is seen in silhouette against 
these expanses of snow. It takes only a little distance to 
blot out the details of a man's features, when seen against 
these dazzling ice-banks. 

Fortunately this party has fine clear weather for its 
ascent. Sometimes a mist or a snow-storm will come up 
suddenly when the guides have not anticipated any such 



WAITING TILL THE CLOUDS KOLL BY 



251 



turn of affairs, and in that case a party may have to wait 
for hours in practically the same spot. It seems a dismal 
waste of time, but discretion is the better part of valor in 
such a case. Imagine climbing that snow slope over yon- 
der in a cloud of thick fog, and walking suddenly off the 
end down into one of those deep crevasses! No, it is 
much better to sit still or move about with as short a 
range of travel as Bonivard had down in his cell at Chillon. 
A man who can tell stories well is a treasure under such 
circumstances. 

But mountain-climbers get hungry; the mountain air 
almost invariably gives a good appetite and the guides 
have plenty of advice to offer about the form in which to 
take supplies for luncheon. Of course these things have 
to be planned very carefully, because not an ounce of ex- 
tra weight must be imposed upon the porters. Even the 
plainest and simplest of fare is relished after one has been 
climbing for three hours, and the coarse black bread of 
Switzerland is delicious here, whatever our opinions of it 
might be when we were over the French frontier on our 
way to Paris. Our spot for a luncheon is to be on the 
Grand Plateau, a level just before the final long pull to the 
summit of the mountain. Look once more at the map; it 
is worth while to keep the different steps of the route 
clearly in mind as they are put down there. The spot 
where we are to rest for a few minutes is marked 90. We 
shall be looking toward the summit. 



252 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



90. Ascent of Mont Blanc, — Party resting on Grand 
Plateau (13,000 feet), Mont Blanc in distance 

The height of the mountain lies straight ahead of us at 
the top of what looks now like a rather low rounding dome. 
The cliffs at the left are the Eochers Rouges. You find 
them put down on the map and you remember we saw 
them above the Mulets when we looked from the Brevent 
in that outlook to which we have referred back so many 
times (Stereograph 80). It is interesting to go back to 
that standpoint now once more, and find the dark rock 
away up towards the summit. From the Brevent it looks 
to be just a little below the final height of the dome. Our 
standpoint now is, as you see, just below that rock. 

You remember, of course, what an effect mountain alti- 
tude has upon the temperature of boiling water; it is not 
nearly as hot when it boils here as it would be found if 
one were getting dinner down in Chamonix. If we were 
actually to do any cooking with boiling water the practical 
implications would be rather serious, for it would of course 
take a great deal longer to complete the process. 

It seems bright and sunshiny here now. There are 
enough men to give us a pleasant sense of companionship, 
and the tracks in the snow are very suggestive of neigh- 
boring humanity. The idea of rest and something to eat 
is very pleasant in a wholesome, commonplace way; but 
this Grand Plateau has seen its own tragedies. In 1870 a 
whole party of eleven men perished here from exposure to 
a storm. They had spent the night at the Grands Mulets, 



DEATH IN A SNOW-STORM 



253 



and people down in Chamonix watched them through the 
forenoon at intervals between drifts of snow-cloud. For a 
few minutes they could be seen plainly climbing up the 
slopes which we have just traversed; then clouds sweeping 
over the face of the mountain shut out the sight of them 
completely. The storm grew fierce and the top of the 
mountain was covered with cloud for a whole week. The 
force of the wind was such that it was not safe for another 
party to attempt the ascent at once, but as soon as the 
weather moderated enough to make the expedition feasi- 
ble a party came up to learn the fate of the first eleven. 
The bodies of five of the men were found frozen to death, 
and the others were accounted for by a letter found on the 
person of one of the party, an American. He wrote: 
" The 7th of September, evening. We have been for two 
days on Mont Blanc in a terrific hurricane; we have lost 
our way, and are now at an altitude of 15,000 feet. I have 
no longer any hope. We have nothing to eat; my feet are 
already frozen and I have strength enough only to write 
these words. Perhaps they will be found and given to you. 
Farewell." They say that in the midst of life we are in 
death; but nothing makes the truth so real as being in a 
spot like this, where one party may experience only the 
most exhilarating pleasure and the next party may all find 
death in the heart of a snow-storm. 

A little farther still up the mountain, on that ridge to 
the right, farther than we can see, is another refuge hut 
with buildings partly for tourists' shelter and partly for 
the making of meteorological observations. Look at the 



254 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

map again and yon find sonth of the Grand Plateau the 
Befuge Vallot at the apex of the red lines marked 91. 
The outlook we are to have from that point is north-north- 
east and you see the lines indicate that we shall be able to 
look off to a long distance. 

91. Ascent of Mont Blanc , — Befuge Hut des Bosses or 
Vallot (14,311 feet), looking north to Bernese Alps, 
Fifty Miles away 

As long ago as 1859, when Tyndall, the English scientist, 
was doing his most energetic mountain-climbing, he came 
up here with ten guides and camped over night on the 
summit (just off at our right now) in a tent ten feet 
square. The men were all sick and forlorn, and the scien- 
tific experiments which he meant to make were not en- 
tirely successful. Nearly thirty years later, 1887, a 
Frenchman, named Vallot, came up and camped for three 
nights. There were nineteen in his party, the number 
made up by porters bringing supplies. He sent back fif- 
teen of them and four stayed — two men to make scientific 
observations and two guides to accompany them down. 
It was through Vallot's endeavors and influence that 
this hut here was afterwards built on the Bosse or 
"hump" of rock, in order to make scientific excursions 
more easily practicable, and to provide a shelter in which 
individuals might stay over night. The Chamonix people 
were a little afraid that it would hurt the hut at the 
Grands Mulets so far as business prosperity was concerned, 



VIEW FROM THE REFUGE YALLOT 



255 



and they made difficult terms for the erection of the build- 
ing, but the plan was finally put through. The materials 
were brought up by porters who carried about thirty-five 
pounds apiece. Just think of the route over which they 
had to come with this building material on their backs! 
Imagine climbing those ice-heaps that we saw in Stereo- 
graph 82, crossing the crevasses in Stereograph 85, and 
climbing the long steep slopes above the Grands Mulets 
(Stereograph 89) encumbered by such burdens! It is fully 
four miles up from the lower end of the Bossons Glacier. 

We are looking east of north now. The Grand Plateau 
lies down behind this cliff at our left. The first mountain 
on our right is Mont Maudit (14,669 feet), one of the very 
highest mountains in the Alps, and yet its summit is only 
a few hundred feet higher than where we stand. A much 
lower ridge beyond, seen between those two men, belongs 
to the Aiguille du Midi (12,608 feet), while the loftier 
ridge, farther away, but distinctly seen, is the Aiguille 
Verte, the beautiful mountain we saw from the Brevent 
(Stereograph 81). Fifty miles away we catch glimpses of 
the Bernese Alps that we already know. Our field of 
vision from this point is marked out on the general map of 
Switzerland. 

But though the task of building this little Yallot hut 
was great, as we have seen, the building of the ob- 
servatory on the very top of Mont Blanc was something 
still greater. The history of that building is unique. It 
stands even higher than where we are now and a little to 
the right. We will turn about and push on to reach the 



256 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

very summit. See the red lines marked 92 branching 
toward the northeast from Mont Blanc on the map. 

92. Summit of Mont Blanc, highest point in Europe, 
looking northeast past Observatory to the Bernese 
Mountains, Alps 

The very highest point of land in all Europe is the 
point where we stand now. The first careful measure- 
ment of the height was made by an Englishman in 1775. 
He made it 15,660 feet by triangulation, reckoning Lake 
Geneva as 1,228 feet above the sea, and Mont Blanc 14,432 
feet higher. In 1787 De Saussure made another measure- 
ment by means of a mercurial barometer and called it 15,- 
667 feet. The guide-books now call it 15,781 feet. It 
had for years been the dream of the meteorologists of 
Europe to have an experiment station on this height, but 
it was only in 1893 that the enterprise was actually put 
under way. Vallot, who built the hut lower down (Stereo- 
graph 91)established an observatory there and was anxious 
to have an observatory erected on the summit, but the 
latter project was put in practical operation by Janssen 
of Paris, President of the French Academy of Sciences, 
and Director of the Observatory at Meudon. He succeeded 
in interesting Eothschild and others, including Eiffel, the 
famous French engineer, the builder of the Eiffel Tower. 
Of course they started with the idea of founding the 
observatory, in the proper traditional fashion^ on a rock, 
and in August and September of 1891 they tunnelled 
down ninety-six feet through the snow-bed, but even then 



BUILDING THE OBSEEVATOEY 



257 



could reach no rocks. They dug seventy-five feet farther, 
probing for rocks, but no rocks still. Then they decided 
to build the foundations in the snow. Evidently the 
deposit of snow here on the summit is over one hundred 
and seventy feet — how much over, it is impossible to 
estimate closely. In 1892, after a great many experi- 
ments here and at Meudon with regard to the sinking of 
weights in the snow, this observatory building was con- 
structed at Meudon, taken to pieces, transported to 
Chamonix and brought up here in parts, to be put together 
again on the spot. The walls and windows are double. 
The shutters are air-tight and the foundations of the 
building are so planned that the building itself will stay 
vertical even if the snow settles, as is likely to be the case. 
The building was finished in 1894. Most of the materials 
were brought up on the backs of porters, though some 
were hauled up by windlasses from one and another avail- 
able point over intervening slopes. The greatest wonder of 
all about the building is perhaps the fact that Dr. Janssen 
himself was seventy years old at the time, and so lame that 
he was unable to walk readily even on the smooth pave- 
ment of a city street. He had to be hauled up like a part 
of his own materials, partly by the stout arms of porters 
and occasionally by a windlass! The observatory is a 
monument to his personal energy and what Yankees call 
"grit" as well as to the scientific enthusiasm of the 
French people and the generosity of great capitalists. 

Dr. Janssen made a good many interesting experiments 
up here. The apparatus includes a meteorograph to regis- 



258 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

ter atmospheric pressure, temperature and the direction 
and force of the wind. This piece of apparatus is arranged 
by machinery so that it will work eight months without 
supervision. A fine telescope was added in 1895. The 
lowest winter temperature, as recorded by the meteoro- 
graph, has been 45 degrees F. below zero. Here on the 
summit the temperature of the snow, a few inches below 
the surface, appears to be about 20 degrees F. below the 
freezing-point. It was through his observations here that 
Janssen satisfied himself that the oxygen lines in the solar 
spectrum are due to oxygen in our own atmosphere rather 
than to oxygen in the atmosphere of the sun itself. 

The mountains that we see far away there to the left 
beyond the observatory are parts of the range of the 
Bernese Alps. The nearer mountain to the left of the 
observatory is the Aiguille Verte. Comparing our pres- 
ent view of that mountain with the appearance of it from 
the hut Vallot (Stereograph 91), it is easy to see that we 
are at a much higher elevation now. 

The snow-covered mountains to the right, just above 
the slope where the guides have thrown down their ropes, 
are parts of the Monte Eosa range which we saw during 
our journeyings about the head of the Visp valley (Stereo- 
graph 61-63). The distance which one can see from a 
summit like this is enormous, but the very fact that we 
,are so much higher than anything else makes the view, in a 
way, less impressive to the eye; for we lose the magnificent 
outline of neighboring peaks when we simply look down 
upon them as now. Perhaps it is only in our imagination 



THE DESCENT FKOM THE SUMMIT 



259 



that we can fully realize the fact that this is the highest 
bit of land in the whole of Europe, higher than Monte 
Kosa, higher than the Matterhorn, — actually nearer the 
sky and the sun than any other peak between the North 
Sea and the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the broad 
Atlantic. 

But nobody stays long up here on the summit of the 
mountain. The wind is likely to change at any mo- 
ment bringing on a blinding storm of snow. We have 
been exceptionally fortunate in finding the summit clear 
of clouds and storm. But we too must prepare to go 
down. The guides will pick up those ropes and harness 
the party together in customary fashion. They will take 
up their alpenstocks and make ready for the long descent. 
The number of hours required for the descent is of course 
a good deal less than the number needed for climbing up- 
ward. They usually reckon about twelve hours' work to 
get up to the summit from Chamonix, whereas six hours 
will answer under ordinary circumstances going down. It 
will take our party something over an hour to descend as 
far as the Vallot refuge (Stereograph 91), two hours more 
to get down to the Grands Mulets, another two hours to 
reach Pierre Pointue, and a final hour for the last scramble 
down the steep slopes, partly wooded, from Pierre Pointue 
to the village. Before we go we must signal to the people 
in Chamonix, for they are always on the watch when par- 
ties have made the ascent, and they will answer our signal 
by the firing of a cannon. If we were to fire a gun our- 
selves up here, — that is not encouraged on account of the 



260 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

danger of starting avalanches, — we should be surprised to 
find what a faint, thin noise a pistol report produces in the 
rarefied air of this elevation. A signal to Chamonix, 
then, far, far down on our left, and a moment to wait for 
the answer; then we will turn back towards home. 

Again, we may well be thankful for such magnificent 
weather. This is no place in which to go wandering about 
with snow driving in our faces, for the route we have to 
take lies shudderingly near gulfs that turn one dizzy at 
the very thought of them. Look on the map northeast of 
the summit to the lines near the number 93. That is a 
point just below one of the huge ice-chasms that have to 
be cautiously avoided on our way down. 

93, Descent of Mont Blanc,— enormous Crevasses 
near the Summit 

Our guides will take a circuitous route around this 
great opening in the side of the mountain, but sometimes 
it is necessary to descend places as rough and threatening 
as this. The lightest man generally goes down first; 
sometimes one of the guides will have himself let over the 
edge of a snow mass like that up yonder, the others hold- 
ing him by ropes, that he may see what is below and 
decide whether it is advisable for the others to follow. If 
not, they draw him up again and proceed to find a better 
place in which to descend or cross. Sometimes, in coming 
down a very steep precipice of this sort, it is necessary to 
move backwards with one's face toward the cliff, looking 



ACROSS TO THE MONTANVERT 



261 



down through between the legs in order to see where to 
reach for the next foothold! 

If we descend by the usual route, we shall go down past 
the Grands Millets, across the Bossons Glacier once more, 
and then go down to Chamonix by way of Pierre Pointue. 
The very last of the slope, as we approach the village, is 
through woods and over ferny pastures, warm and sweet- 
scented. Flowers grow there only a few rods from the 
everlasting ice, and the sound of brooks running down 
into the Arve welcomes our return from the skies. 



Another excursion which we can take from Chamo- 
nix leads us farther over toward the east, to the Mon- 
tanvert. You remember we saw the dark slopes of this 
mountain when we were on the heights at the north side 
of the valley of Chamonix (Stereograph 81). It would 
be well to return to that standpoint for a few minutes 
and see again how the Mer de Glace comes down between 
the Montanvert and the Aiguille Verte. The location of 
the mountains and the glacier is shown very plainly on 
our Map No. 11. Almost in the centre of the long map 
we find the Mer de Glace starting from many tributary 
glaciers and winding down toward the valley of the 
Chamonix on the north. We find the Montanvert be- 
tween the Mer de Glace and Chamonix, southeast of 
Chamonix, and our next standpoint is marked 94 on the 
eastern slope, overlooking the glacier. The red lines 
show we are to look nearly south. 



262 SWITZEELAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

y4=. A Hemnant of the Glacial Period,— huge Mer de 
Glace and Grandes J or asses 

It is a simple and easy matter to come over here from 
Chamonix if one keeps to the beaten path. There is no 
danger and no need for any extraordinary physical ex- 
ertion. This is the most famous of all the glaciers in 
Switzerland, and we can readily understand why it is 
popularly known as the " Sea of Ice/' for those billowy 
masses down there certainly do look like the waves of a 
rushing river suddenly hardened by some magic touch. 
See what enormous masses of debris there are on either 
side of the glacier, — the lateral moraines, as geologists 
call them. Some of those rocks that have been brought 
down by the slow-moving ice are from twenty to thirty 
feet square, although the glacier handles them as care- 
lessly as if they were little pebbles. It is again a surprise 
to find these great streams of ice side by side with sum- 
mer foliage, flowers, and warm, sunny banks. We can see 
here in midsummer a fragrant hay crop not more than ten 
or twelve feet from the edge of an ice-stream that has 
been in practically the same place for centuries. One 
man may be wiping the perspiration from his brow in the 
intervals of mowing a hillside pasture, while another man 
not more than a hundred yards away may be freezing to . 
death down in the depths of a crevasse. The extremes 
of winter and summer go hand in hand. 

The geologists tell us that the central part of the Mer 
de Glace moves nearly two feet a day — that is faster than 



THE MER DE GLACE 



263 



the sides, because of the lesser friction to hold it back. 
The movements continue day and night. To give the 
movement a very homely personal analogy, — rocks in the 
surface of a glacier are found to have a forward, onward 
movement, something as spots on a man's finger-nail grow 
farther and farther out while yet the general shape of the 
nail seems to remain unchanged. 

Look once again at the map and identify the ice- 
serpent which joins the Mer de Glace, coming in 
from the right. You see it is the Tacul or Giant 
Glacier; and the Glacier de Leschaux must be that 
great white mass that we see in the distance at the ex- 
treme left. Can you make out the identity of that tall, 
jagged ridge of mountains straight ahead of us? Look 
on the map again, and you see they are put down unmis- 
takably near the lower side of the map, a ridge of sharp- 
toothed peaks standing in line nearly east and west, the 
range known as the Grandes Jorasses, that stand guard 
on the Italian frontier. Again we need to look carefully, 
for not all those mountain summits we see directly before 
us are an equal distance away. In fact the somewhat 
darker mountain rising like a pyramid directly from the 
glacier stands much nearer us than the line of the Grandes 
Jorasses beyond. That nearer mountain is the Aiguille 
du Tacul, found on the map not over two-thirds as far 
away as the farther peaks. We should notice that Ai- 
guille du Tacul particularly, because we are soon to mount 
to its summit. There are some magnificent views over 
there in the neighborhood of the Grandes Jorasses, and 



264 SWITZEELAND THEOUGH THE STEEEOSCOPE 

we must get just a few glimpses of that wonderful scenery 
before we turn our faces away from Switzerland. You 
see that very dark, rocky elevation at our right, with the 
glacier coming out from behind it? We will go over be- 
yond and around that mountain, cross the Tacul Glacier 
and mount to the Glacier des Periades, of which we get 
just a little glimpse above where the lines of two moun- 
tains cross. From that point we can look southwest, 
back towards Mont Blanc in the distance. Find now the 
number 95 in a circle near the west side of the Aiguille 
du Tacul. The red lines show that we are to look back 
from that point toward the southwest. 

95. Ascent of Aiguille du Tacul —looking to Tour 
Monde 9 Mont JBlanc and Mont Maudit from 
the Glacier des Periades 

Strange how black a human figure looks against this 
snow! Features are blotted out just as they are when we 
see a person against a brightly lighted window. It is a 
fine chance to study characteristic masses and proportions 
of figures in action. We do not need to see any details 
of that guide at the right to recognize him as an old ac- 
quaintance, for we have studied his energetic silhouette 
many times since the first glimpse we had, away up 
on that impossible precipice of the Brevent (Stereo- 
graph 79). 

The glacier on which we are standing is, we know, the 
Glacier des Periades. Opposite us is the Glacier du Geant, 
or Tacul. We know Mont Blanc now, of course. His white 



MONT MAUDIT AND THE TOUR RONDE 



265 



head is unmistakable, looming up directly before us over 
everything else. 

Those slender, steeple-like peaks on Mont Maudit, to 
the right, are a kind of rock formation very common in 
the Mont Blanc range. No wonder the French-speaking 
Chamonix folk call them " needles." In the distance to 
the extreme left is another of these peaks, La Tour Eonde, 
but the most striking of all these needle-like summits is 
the " Giant," or Aiguille du Geant, which we caught a 
glimpse of at our right when on the Montanvert (Stereo- 
graph 94). It stands to our left here, beyond the range 
of our vision. 

We can get the best view of the " Giant " by turning 
about, crossing the Glacier des Periades behind us, and 
then looking back southwest from the Aiguille du Tacul. 
The map shows the direction, in the guide-lines from 
point 96. Let us go back just a moment to our stand- 
point on the Montanvert (Stereograph 94) and you can 
see where it is we are to go. You see that broken, jagged 
pile of cliffs, just above where the glacier of the Geant 
and the Glacier des Leschaux come together to form the 
Mer de Glace, the rugged side of the Aiguille du Tacul? 
We shall take a stand part way up one of those ice-filled 
hollows between the mountain's ribs and look off toward 
the west to> the tall, slender spire that just peers over the 
shoulder of the Aiguille des Charmoz, the nearer slope on 
our extreme right. 



266 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



96. Ascent of Aiguille du Tacul— looking southwest to 
Aiguille du Geant 

An angle of just about forty-five degrees, is it not, that 
we are climbing now? It is well that the leader should 
be a sure-footed guide. If the man lowest and last in 
line should slip, that would not be so bad; the others could 
brace themselves, dig their alpenstocks and axes into the 
ice and arrest his fall. But if the leader should slip and 
come sliding back, — well, that does not happen when the 
leader is a good Chamonix guide. 

This is one of the places where climbers have to be on 
the constant lookout for avalanches. These great couloirs 
or gulfs between the upcropping rock ridges are favorite 
places for snow-slides and rock-slides. Look! Loose 
snow has fallen on the glaciers surface over there on the 
open slope beyond the men! Is it a mere accident of the 
wind? Is it the sprinkled remnant of some distant ava- 
lanche? Can it possibly be the avant-coureur of an 
avalanche down this very gully? No. The guides think 
there is no immediate danger, considering the present con- 
dition of the snow in general, so we will venture to stand 
here a few minutes to study that strange freak in moun- 
tains, the Giant's Needle (Aiguille du G6ant), up there 
on our left. It is an incredible form for a mountain, — 
- as impossible as the Matterhorn without the Matterhorn's 
awful dignity. Even as late as 1871, when almost all the 
notable peaks of Switzerland had been scaled, as good an 
Alpinist as Mr. Leslie Stephen declared it was an im- 



VIEWS FKOM AIGUILLE DU TACUL 



267 



pregnable fortress; nobody could climb it. Eleven years 
later (1882) a party of Italians did climb it as far as the 
lower , of those two sharp teeth at the top, and that same 
summer an Englishman reached the tip of the taller tooth. 
It is time that the word impossible should be marked in 
dictionaries " obsolete"! The peak, La Tour Konde, 
which we saw from our last standpoint (Stereograph 93) 
far to our left, is now seen in the distance on our right. 

Higher and higher still our men call us to climb up 
the Aiguille du Tacul. Soon we will pause again and look 
off toward the north. Consulting the map you see how 
the lines marking out this next field of vision cross the 
lines from the Brevent (Stereograph 81) almost at right 
angles? We are to see some of the same peaks which 
were visible from standpoint 81, only from another side. 
Look back to No. 81 for just a moment. There, you 
know, we saw the Aiguille du Dru standing directly in 
front of the Aiguille Verte, like a child in front of its 
mother. Now we are to see the same two peaks from the 
south side. This time the Aiguille Verte will appear not 
so much like one sharp pyramid as like the steep ridge of 
a gable-roof, and the Aiguille du Dru will show its sepa- 
ration from the other summit. 

97. Ascent of Aiguille du Tacul— amid dizzy Heights, 
looking north to Aiguille du Dru and Aiguille Verte 

How far do you suppose it is across from here to that 
broken ridge of the Aiguille Verte? Fully four miles in 
a straight line, and as far to the Aiguille du Dru, there 



268 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

at the left. We can see now how it was that the smaller 
peak stood exactly in front of the larger one when we saw 
them both from the Brevent. Now it is the Aiguille du 
Moine that stands between us and the Aiguille Verte, and 
the glacier that we see (over beyond our guide), is the 
Talefre. Both this glacier and another that we cannot 
see, farther to the right, are moving slowly down into the 
huge Mer de Glace off at our left. The famous " Gar- 
den" is over there in the Talefre, — an island encircled by 
a wall of debris from the neighboring mountains and sur- 
rounded by a sea of ice. For a few weeks every summer 
Alpine flowers actually bloom there in places where soil 
has gathered in the clefts of the rocks. A French botan- 
ist some forty years ago (1868) enumerated one hundred 
and nine species of plant life found on this queer oasis in 
the ice-desert, — the strangest of surprises in a place like 
this. One expects to dodge descending boulders and show- 
ers of loose stones when he is on these mountain-sides. 
One has his mind made up to watch for avalanches of 
snow, and for the cracking and falling of enormous icicles; 
but gathering flowers? Switzerland is full of curious con- 
tradictions, for blossoms naturally suggest a landscape 
smiling and serene, not a bit like this. 

'Now we can follow the lead of these glaciers, as we 
would follow the lead of mountain streams, down towards 
Chamonix. The map shows how they slide down into 
the Mer de Glace. We will descend the rocks here and 
let the guides find a practicable route along the glacier 
back to the Montanvert, from which we looked a while 



THE MAUVAIS PAS AND MER DE GLACE 269 

ago (Stereograph 94). The dotted lines on the map show 
pretty nearly the track to be followed. Study the map 
and see how the most desirable path leads along the edge 
of the glacier at the foot of the Montanvert and then 
crosses the ice to the point marked 98 in red. From 98 
we can turn about and look back once again toward the 
very spot where we are now. 

98. The " Mauvais Pas " and Mer de Glace, Aiguille 
du Geant in the distance 

The clouds are always to be taken into account. There 
they come, filling in the distance and hiding from view 
the Aiguille du Tacul which we just climbed. It is over 
behind our good guide Simond as he stands there last in 
line on the path along the side of this cliff. The iron 
rods fastened along the rocks here do not mean that the 
place is especially dangerous as Alpine climbing goes, but 
only that it is a favorite resort for travellers who do not 
care for more adventurous scrambling, and so it has been 
made as easy as possible for ordinary tourists. True, it 
would be an ugly enough fall from here down to those 
jagged blocks of ice in the Mer de Glace, but an experi- 
enced guide considers this path as easy and safe as walking 
downstairs. It is only when he feels his way down over 
a wall of ice-encased rocks, with a distance of two or three 
thousand vertical feet between him and a glacier-bed, that 
one of these Chamonix men would begin to feel the pleas- 
ant excitement of a risk! It all depends on the accumu- 
lated experience by which we measure any new experience. 



270 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

They tell us here the story of a man who was picking 
his way along this narrow shelf, years ago, when he met 
a herd of chamois. It was impossible to turn out. The 
chamois were many, the man was only one. He lay down 
flat on the shelf and let the whole herd walk over him! 

Perhaps the skies will clear for us if we move on along 
this rocky way to a point called the Chapeau, a little 
farther north, down the valley. There is a particularly 
fine view from that point when the clouds are not lying 
too low. See; the dotted lines on the map show how our 
route can be continued to the point marked 99. From 
99 we can take one more long look back over the glacier 
between its high mountain walls. 

99. Mer de Glace from the Chapeau ; Aiguille du 
Geant, Charmoz and Montanvert in the distance 

We know the Montanvert at once on our right, because 
it is wooded and green. It was from there that we had 
such a magnificent view of the glacier with the Grandes 
Jorasses standing guard beyond (Stereograph 94). You 
remember how near were those perfectly smooth, steep 
slopes above the glacier, when we looked off from the 
Montanvert? Then the Aiguille du Geant was seen just 
peering over the shoulder of the Aiguille des Charmoz; 
now the Geant stands out like a tall chimney above the 
upper end of the glaciers, and the Charmoz shows itself 
big and clear and sharp just opposite us here. It is only 
three miles across to the Charmoz, while the Geant is over 
seven miles away. 



THE WORK OF MOUNTAIN STREAMS 271 



Years ago chamois hunters used to camp on this little 
plateau where we are now; but the chamois are few to-day 
and tourists take the place of the hunters. Strangely 
grand and poetic surroundings are these in which to make 
one's living keeping a restaurant; but the mountain air 
does make everybody hungry, and the offices of a good 
cook are to be respected! 

It was about here that Forbes and Tyndall made many 
of their celebrated observations in regard to the move- 
ments of glaciers. Buskin made some interesting calcu- 
lations^ too, about the rate at which mountain streams 
hereabouts wear away their own smaller beds. He ex- 
perimented with a little stream only four inches deep, 
flowing from the Aiguille des Charmoz down towards Cha- 
monix (Chamonix, you remember, is three miles away at 
our right). He filled bottles with the flowing water from 
the little midsummer stream, weighed the sandy sediment 
and made very careful estimates of the volume and velo- 
city of the stream itself. These were the figures he 
obtained. 

The stream carried along about three-quarters of a 
pound of powdered granite every minute. Calling it 
thirty pounds per hour, and a hundred-weight every four 
hours, it would amount to two tons a week, — fully eighty 
tons a year. This seems to keep well within the limits of 
a modest estimate. And the stream was only one, a very 
small one, among many. Its work in the valley, so Bus- 
kin estimated, ought to be considered as multiplied by 
one thousand to include the work of neighboring 



272 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

streams; — that makes eighty thousand tons of pulverized 
rock worn away and carried down from the mountain- 
sides to the valley just by brooks alone, not counting any 
of the hundreds of great avalanches that fall every year, 
and not counting the grinding of the cliffs by this moving 
sea of ice at our feet. 

Is it any wonder that the Ehone is gradually filling in 
the eastern end of Lake Geneva as we saw it (Stereograph 
74), making the lake into a level, fertile plain? 

See what strange, fantastic shapes the ice takes here 
near the end of its bed, — a confused mass of towers and 
pinnacles and jagged aiguilles like smaller editions of the 
mountains. Do those parallel openings in the ice this 
side of the Montanvert mean deep chasms? The cre- 
vasses down there between those grotesque ice-towers are 
hundreds of feet deep; sometimes the sound of running 
water comes up from the unknown space below where 
lonely rivers run underneath the ice. 

Let us take one more long look up the valley while the 
noon sunshine plays with the peaks and the glaciers. The 
grass at our feet grows in as cheerful and commonplace a 
way as if it were beside our own door at home, only a 
stone's throw from the dramatic terrors of the ice. Here 
in this mountain inn there is comfort in plenty for exact- 
ing humankind, while up on those needle-peaks of the 
Charmoz and the Geant not even an eagle finds a place 
for a nest. It is a spot where one's imagination is stag- 
gered by the vastness of things and bewildered by the 
thought of far-stretching ages of time. We cannot quite 



THE MEB DE GLACE 



273 



take into consciousness the length of years that wind and 
weather and gravity have been working to get ready for 
the grass-blades and for us. We cannot quite imagine 
what changes other centuries may make in this very val- 
ley, wearing off the sharp peaks, planing off the precipi- 
tous cliffs, till they become rounded like our Appalachian 
ranges at home. How will it look after the elements 
have been at work another ten thousand years? And 
what kind of men and women will be here to see? The 
problem is too big for us. All we can fairly get hold of 
now is the beauty of the world to-day. And isn't it 
glorious? 

Shall we go down among those ice-castles of the glacier 
for our farewell look at Alpine miracles? Then let us 
choose the spot. At the extremest right as we look now, 
well out in the heart of the huge stream, do }^ou see a 
pyramidal tower of ice with some tall, crooked, conical 
cliffs near it at the left? With the guide's help (and we 
need it) we can work our way down among those piled-up 
monuments of ice and look across the rest of the glacier 
toward where Chamonix lies in its own deep valley. (Look 
back to Stereograph 81 for just a moment, and recall how 
the Mer de Glace seemed to cut off the eastern end of the 
valley of Chamonix when we saw it from the Brevent. 
Now we are to look from the piled-up ice-crags of the 
" fall 99 at the end of the glacier itself, back towards the 
same Chamonix valley.) 



274 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



100. Great Ice-fall at the end of the Mer de Glace 

This is the way in which the breaking " waves " of the 
Mer de Glace dash high at the end of their course through 
the rock-bound valley! Can anybody figure out the exact 
force that pulled and pushed the enormous masses of solid 
ice, piling them up on end like these huge obelisks? Fig- 
ures are impressive in their way, but here is the real fact. 
Every cloud that sails over the Aiguille Verte, dropping 
a handful of snowflakes, pushes just so much harder on 
this end of the glacier, and keeps the splintered ice piled 
high in spite of all that summer sunshine and mountain- 
streams can do to melt it and carry its waters down to 
the Ehone. Perhaps some particles of this very ice under 
our feet once made part of a wave, lapping the ships of 
2Eneas as he sailed the blue Mediterranean. It might 
easily be so. And perhaps the very same particles will 
some day reach the Mediterranean again by way of the 
Arve and the Ehone. It is a long, slow journey home! 

The old Hebrew poets never saw this heart of Switzer- 
land, but they fathomed the secret of its deepest signifi- 
cance. We have to-day no new phrases that say it half as 
well as the old phrases: 

" Bless the Lord, my soul, . . . who layeth the beams 
of his chambers in the waters; who maketh the clouds his 
chariot; who walketh upon the wings of the wind. . . . 
The waters go down by the valley unto the place which 
thou hast founded for them. . . . 

. . Praise the Lord from the earth, fire and hail; 
snow and vapor; stormy wind fulfilling his word." 



The great possibilities of usefulness of STEREOSCOPIC 
PHOTOGRAPHS are now being recognized by leading educa- 
tors. Think over the meaning of the following statements in regard 
to our Stereographs : 

'\Whoever has seen the modern stereoscopic photograph through a stereo- 
scope realizes how tame and unsatisfactory are the best plain photographs and 
engravings. Children have been robbed of a rich inheritance from the idea that 
the stereoscope was for amusement, and from the fact that the world has been 
imposed upon by having ordinary photographic productions mounted for its 
use. These worthless pictures, even in the stereoscope, no more compare with 
the stereoscopic photographs than a wax flower does with the fragrant bloom 
which Heaven has called forth from the living, thrilling plant. Even the best 
plain pictures to be bought are crude in comparison with the beautiful land- 
scape, reproduced paintings, or other stereoscopic photographs brought to life 
in this instrument. The time has come to make full use of these pictures and 
this instrument in the schools. It is now feasible to teach geography, science, 
and art by their use. It costs a mere trifle and the results are incalculable. 

" The stereopticon does not approach the stereoscope for value in the school- 
room. A wide-awake teacher will have no difficulty in getting all the money- 
necessary to equip an entire building with all the instruments and views needed. 
The danger is of being imposed upon. The best cost a mere trifle; the others 
are worthless—dear at any price."— Editorial, New England Journal of Educa- 
tion, Boston. 

"I have been experimenting with your stereoscopes in my second-, third-, 
and fourth-year classes with very satisfactory results. These lessons have 
given my children (many of whom have never seen the country) a splendid idea 
of mountain, valley, and plain, of plant and animal life, etc., far better than 
they could have received in any other way, except by actual visitation. 

" 1 am well pleased with the results and I hope we shall soon be able to have 
this valuable aid in all our schools."— Carrie Wallace Kearns, Prin. Public 
School 105, New York City. 

" Permit me to say that I am greatly pleased with your stereoscopes and the 
views you have collected. A stereograph is undoubtedly a much more perfect 
illusion than a flat picture. By means of this device our classes may do 4 field 
work ' in geography without rising from their seats, and may take all the jour- 
neys recommended by Locke and Montaigne without the expense of travel. I 
have never seen St. Peter's at Rome, but your two views of that historic struc- 
ture have made so vivid an impression upon my mind that I can describe every 
detail of the scene, even to the woman who is hanging out clothes on the roof of 
the house from which one of the pictures was taken. 

"In city schools the great difficulty is to make instruction concrete. Geo- 
graphical concepts must grow out of concrete material studied at first hand. 
But some material can never be brought into the class-room. How is a pupil to 
get an image of an iceberg? A verbal description cannot give it, a flat picture 
is inadequate. A stereograph is almost as good as the real thing. 

*' I hope you will continue to gather material and thus enable us to make 
real to children many things that are now, in spite of the best we can do, little 
more than a memory of symbols."— Joseph S. Taylor, Ph.D., N. Y. City. 



UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, 

NEW YORK AND LONDON. 



Underwood Stereoscopic Tours. 

The Underwood "Tours*' of Original Stereoscopic Photographs are put 
up in neat leatherette cases, as indicated below, and the stereographs are ar- 
ranged in the order a tourist would visit the actual places. 

Our improved Aluminum-Mahogany Stereoscope sells for 90 cents. This is 
not included in the prices given below. A higher-priced stereoscope can be fur- 
nished if desired. 

The '* Traveling in the Holy Land " Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photo- 
graphs, descriptive book, in cloth, by Dr. J. L. Hurlbut, with seven Patent 
Maps and Leatherette Case,— $17.60. 

The 44 Jerusalem " Tour (a part of the " Traveling in the Holy Land n Tour) 
—27 Stereoscopic Photographs, descriptive pamphlet, with new Patent Map and 
Case,— $4.50. 

The Russian Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs, descriptive 
book, in cloth, by M. S. Emery, with ten Patent Maps and Leatherette Case,— 
$17.60. 

The " St. Petersburg " Tour (a part of the Russian Tour)— 39 Stereoscopic 
Photographs, descriptive book with five Patent Maps and Case,— $6.50. 

The ** Moscow " Tour (a part of the Russian Tour)— 27 Stereoscopic Photo- 
graphs, descriptive book with three Patent Maps and Case— $4.50. 

The Italian^Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs, descriptive book, 
in cloth, by D. J. Ellison, D.D., with ten Patent Maps and Leatherette Case,— 
$18.00. 

The Rome Tour (a part of the Italian Tour)— 46 Stereoscopic Photographs, 
descriptive book, in cloth, with five Patent Maps and Case,— $8.60. 

The "Egypt and Its Wonders" Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photo- 
graphs, descripive book, in cloth, and Leatherette Case,— $16.60. 

The Chinese Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs, descriptive 
book, in cloth, by James Ricalton, with eight Patent Maps, and Leatherette 
Case.— $17.75. 

The Honkong and Canton Tour (a part of the Chinese Tour)— 15 Stereo- 
scopic Photographs, descriptive book with three Patent Maps and Case,— $2.50. 

The Boxer Uprising, Cneef oo, Taku, Tientsin (a part of the Chinese Tour)— 
26 Stereoscopic Photographs, descriptive book and three Patent Maps and 
Case— $4.35. 

The Pekin Tour (a part of the Chinese Tour)— 31 Stereoscopic Photographs, 
descriptive book with two Patent Maps and Case.— $5.25. 

The Swiss Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs, descriptive book, 
in cloth, by M. S. Emery, with eleven Patent Maps and Leatherette Case,— $17.60. 

The Lake Lucerne Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour)— 11 Stereoscopic 
Photographs, with descriptive book and three Patent Maps,— $1.85. 

The Bernese Alps Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour)— 27 Stereoscopic 
Photographs, with descriptive book and three Patent Maps,— $4.50. 

The Engadine Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour)— 8 Stereoscopic Photo- 
graphs, with descriptive book and four Patent Maps,— $1.35. 

The Zermatt Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour)— 15 Stereoscopic Photo- 
graphs, with descriptive book and two Patent Maps,— $2.50. 

The Mont Blanc Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour)— 23 Stereoscopic 
Photographs, with descriptive book and two Patent Maps,— $3.85. 

The French Tour— 72 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leatherette 
Case— $12.00. 

The** Paris Exposition" Tour— 60 Original Stereoscopic Photographs, 
Map with New Patent System and Description, and Leatherette Case,— $10.00. 

The Spanish Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leatherette 
Case,-$16.60. 

The Portuguese Tour— 60 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leather- 
ette Case,— $10.00. 

The German Tour— 84 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leatherette 
Case,— $14.00. 



The Austrian Tour— 84 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leatherette 
Case— $14.00. 

The "Great Britain" Tour— 72 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and 
Leatherette Case,— $12.00. 

The Scandinavian Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and 
Leatherette Case,— $16.60. 

The Grecian Tour— 72 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leatherette 
Case— $12.00. 

The Japanese Tour— 72 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leather- 
ette Case $12.00. 

The " United States " Tour, No. i— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs 
and Leatherette Case,— $16.60. 

The 4 4 United States " Tour, No. 2—200 Original Stereoscopic Photographs 
and Leatherette Cases,— $33.20. 

The "Philippine" Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and 
Leatherette Case,— $16.60. 

The Cuban and Porto Rican Set— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs 
and Leatherette Case,— $16.60. 

The Spanish-American War Set— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs 
and Leatherette Case,— $16.60. (A Set of 72 and Case,— $12.00.) 

The Mexican Tour— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and Leather- 
ette Case,— $16.60. 

The British-Boer War Set— 100 Original Stereoscopic Photographs and 
Leatherette Case, -$16.60. 

The "Trip Around the World" Tour— 72 Original Stereoscopic Photo- 
graphs, with descriptive book and Leatherette Case,— $12.00. 

The ' * Niagara Falls ' ' Tour— 18 Original Stereoscopic Photographs with 
neat Case and descriptive book, with two Patent Maps,— $3.00. 

The Yosemite Tour— 24 Original Stereoscopic Photographs, descriptive 
book, by Chas. Q. Turner, with Patent Map and Case,— $4.00. 

" President McKinley " Set No. I, containing 12 Stereographs in a neat 
Case,— $2.00. 

" President McKinley " Set No. 2, containing 24 Stereographs in a neat 
Case,— $4.00. 

"President McKinley" Set No. 4, containing 48 Stereographs in a neat 
Leatherette Case, with descriptive book,— $8.50. 

" President McKinley " Set No. 5, containing 60 Stereographs in a neat 
Leatherette Case, with descriptive book,— $10.50, or in a genuine leather case, 
velvet lined, with inscription stamped in silver,— $12.00. 

Other interesting and instructive tours can be made up from our large 
collection of stereographs always in stock. 

We advise our customers to purchase complete series on the countries they 
may be interested in. One hundred Stereoscopic Photographs of one country 
will generally give much better satisfaction than the same number scattered 
over several countries. Many of our patrons are placing all of our Educational 
Stereoscopic Tours in their homes alongside of the standard works in their 
libraries. Schools and public libraries are finding our Stereographs very help- 
ful in their work. The United States Government considers them so valuable 
that all Educational Tours published to date, with the new Underwood Extension 
Cabinet, were recently purchased for the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. 

When two or more of the "100" tours are wanted, we recommend the " New 
Underwood Extension Cabinet,"— the only practical Stereograph Cabinet in 
existence. It can be kt built up " from time to time as desired, holding from 200 
to 2,000 Stereographs, or more. 

UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, 

FIFTH A. VENTJFI AND NINETEENTH STREET, NEW TOMK. 

London, England; Toronto, Canada; Ottawa, 
Kansas; San Francisco, California, 



AUG 2 1 1902 



AUG 21 1902 
icorvnn to w? wv. 

AUG. 21 '902 
AUG. 26 1902 



;^ v 



■ LIBRARY 

1 111 111 Hill Nil III 


liiiiiliill^^^K 


021 638 829 A 




















APS ^ PL A! 



KM 



SWITZERLAND 

ThrowgH the Stereoscope 



I General Map of Switzerland 
II LaKe Lucerne 
III Lucerne 

- - "v 
V The Bernese Alps 
VI Upper Engadine and Bernina 

: • 

VII Loop Tunnels, Biaschina Ra- 

- .. • 

VIII Loop Tunnels near Wasen 
IX Zermatt and the Mt. Rosa 

: 

X Great St* Bernard 
XI The Chain of Mont Blanc 



MAP NO. 1. 





EXPLANATIONS OF MAP SYSTEM. 



MAP NO. lO. 



GREAT ST. BERNARD 



